Chapter 1: What challenges did New Orleans face in rebuilding schools after Hurricane Katrina?
Hello, everybody. This is Ravi Gupta, co-host of Majority 54, which is here on the Midas Network and airs every Wednesday. I've been working with the brothers for years, and this year we've been working together on a special project. It's called Where the Schools Went.
It's a five-part podcast series all about New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina and how the schools have changed dramatically in that city and what that means for all of us all around the country. It's all about the politics, the policy, the government service, idealism, insiders and outsiders. It's got drama. It's got inspiration.
And it's all about the most important functions of government, which is taking care of our kids, educating our kids. And we spoke to over 50 people as part of the story. And we're dropping here our second episode. This one's all about a school called George Washington Carver, which was central to a lot of the debates and changes that were happening in New Orleans after the storm.
If you really liked this episode, go to Where the Schools Went wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe there and you'll get the rest of the episodes. So that's Where the Schools Went wherever you get your podcasts. Here we go. What really makes a school great? Impressive college admissions? An obsession with literacy? Strong test scores? Or is it hallways that feel safe?
Educators who remember your name? What about sports? Marching bands? The rituals that turn a building into a memory? Most of us would probably say, all of the above. But what happens when you don't have the luxury of all of the above? when your city is in crisis, when the money is tight, the clock is ticking, and every decision feels like a trade-off?
What do you choose to build first when you can't build it all at once? And maybe, most importantly, who gets to decide? In this episode, we'll explore those questions through the story of one school, a school with a famous name, a school that became a battleground over who has the right to shape the future of an entire neighborhood. I'm Ravi Gupta. This is Where the Schools Went.
The 1940s brought a wave of migration to New Orleans. The Black population alone surged by 20%. But the infrastructure didn't follow. Housing was scarce, and the overcrowding issues didn't stop at the front door. The first high school for Black students in New Orleans had opened in 1917. By the end of the 1950s, the city had added just two more. Classrooms were packed.
Federal money came in to build a sprawling new housing project, which would eventually include a locally funded high school. Officials chose a patch of swampy land in the Ninth Ward, west of the industrial canal. far from the city center and the white neighborhoods. They named the housing project Desire after the street that cut across the land. All right, so we're in a Desire neighborhood.
It's called the Desire neighborhood because it's the Desire housing project. This is Oscar Brown, Ninth Ward resident, speaking from the Thrive Ninth Ward Community Center. He's walking me through Desire, where generations of Black families have lived. And I have friends, mentors, they talk about the beauty of Desire when it first was built.
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Chapter 2: How did George Washington Carver High School become a battleground for educational reform?
And the gap between them was about to crack wide open. In the years after Katrina, a new charter school opened four miles from Carver. It was called Tsai Academy. And while I was leading schools in Nashville in 2011, I was invited to visit. The campus, if we even want to call it that, was anything but glamorous.
A chain-link fence surrounded by a cluster of trailers that were donated by a local Catholic school. It even had wooden boardwalks connecting the classrooms. Despite its humble exterior, what I saw inside was impressive. Classrooms buzzed with focus, teachers weren't just teaching lessons, they were coaching, pushing, encouraging.
Here's a clip from an old video from Teach For All, where a school leader from Tsai is describing her goals before she observes a classroom. I note what I want the teacher to keep doing, slight changes I want them to make, and what they're changing should be related to their current instructional goal.
So I look up each teacher's instructional goal, and I look to see are they actually working toward meeting that goal. Adults were constantly refining their craft. They were expected to move fast, teach well, and never blame circumstances for low results. Those results, the data, was their touchstone.
So much so that in the staff office, there was a framed photo of the word data with a heart drawn around it. That culture also required structure. Uniforms were checked down to the socks. The school day was longer. Students received weekly and sometimes daily progress reports tied to behavior, effort, and performance. This was a no-excuses school.
It prioritized discipline, rigor, and academic excellence. The student body was more than 90% Black, more than 90% low-income. Students mainly came from the 9th Ward, from the very same neighborhoods that Carver had long served. There was no championship football team, no award-winning marching band, no alumni base, no history.
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Chapter 3: What historical context influenced the establishment of Carver High School?
Because unlike Carver, which had deep roots in the community, Psy Academy was built by outsiders. He was the brainchild of Ben Markovits, who was 28 years old when he founded Psy, just six years after graduating from Harvard. The Washington, D.C. native had one mission. What I would say is non-negotiable and never changes is our goal of getting all our students ready for college success.
He hired a staff of mostly overachieving recent college grads, enthusiastic, idealistic, bright-eyed. Many had come through Teach for America, and they delivered. The average student had entered multiple grade levels behind. Here's how one Psi teacher described her incoming ninth graders in an interview with Education Week. They come in at about a 4.5 grade point level.
We have several that are emerging readers that cannot read or can read only basic words and can't decode words and have never been taught phonics. And I'm sorry, that makes me furious. But by senior year, those students were posting some of the highest ACT gains and state test results in the city. In 2010, 98% of Tsai's first graduating class was accepted to college.
Almost all of them were first-generation college students. There were plenty of critics who questioned Tsai's success. They pointed out how most of its teachers were young and white, how Tsai suspended more than three times as many students than the average school in Louisiana. In one early cohort, only 52 of the 83 students who began as freshmen made it to senior year.
But even with those criticisms, Tsai's success took the nation by storm. Ben was even interviewed by Oprah. So today, we're here with founders, with principals and teachers for some of the most groundbreaking schools in the country.
These school leaders are doing whatever it takes, taking the hours and the sacrifice to make sure... And at the end of his live interview, he accepted a million-dollar check from Oprah's Angel Network. So the Angel Network is giving each of your charter school networks one million dollars. A million dollars for you. A million dollars for you. A million dollars for mastery.
A million dollars for SciAcademy. A school that had started in trailers, surrounded by fences, run on urgency and belief, was now held up as a national model. But with shallow roots in the community it served, did it belong in New Orleans? At first, SAI brushed off its critics and focused on growth.
SAI Academy evolved into Collegiate Academies, a network built to replicate its model across the city. The city of New Orleans had received a $2 billion FEMA settlement to rebuild school buildings. Instead of completely new schools like SAI Academy, the city needed to use their new funds to reconstruct existing legacy institutions. That's when Ben Markovits started eyeing Carver.
It also sort of captivated us in a great number of ways. Specifically, it was in a part of the ninth ward where a lot of our students were coming from already. Collegiate began to prepare an application for Carver's charter. But unbeknownst to them, others were already doing the same. The alumni.
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Chapter 4: What were the community's reactions to the changes at Carver after Hurricane Katrina?
But it didn't sound cold or mechanical. It sounded focused, grounded, like a team that knew exactly what they were there to do. After the staff circle, I talked with school principal Victor Jones as he observed morning student arrival. Victor recently took over as school leader for Jarrell, who now runs the entire collegiate network. It's a beautiful day.
One of my favorite things about Carver is a lot of things, but it is the fact that, like, to work at a school where teachers who work at that school will bring their kids to learn at that school, that is rare. The fact that, like, so many of our teammates actually bring their kids to go to school here and that I've got to teach them, that they wanted me to teach their kids. How you doing, sweetie?
You good? Good to see you. It's, like, an amazing, like, it's a, we're doing something right. Later, I sat in on one of Victor's classes, and what I saw felt familiar. Victor was using teaching techniques I remembered from the old reform days. One in particular, no opt-out. The idea that students can't simply choose not to participate.
Another, right is right, meaning the teacher doesn't round up or settle for a partially correct answer. Victor called on a student who didn't know the answer. And then Victor turned to another student and asked a related question, something that could help unlock it for the first student.
Finally, he came back to the first student, patiently prompting, supporting, guiding, until the student arrived at the correct answer. It was the kind of moment that's easy to overlook, but it captured something essential about what Carver has become. a school shaped by the DNA of reform, structure, rigor, clarity, but deepened, adapted by time, experience, and care.
Victor Jones is the principal, so one might expect him to say glowing things about the school. But what struck me most during my visit wasn't just Victor's passion. It was how consistent it was. Conversation after conversation. Custodians, coaches, teacher, culture leads. Many of them from the neighborhood. Many of them alumni, parents, or longtime community members. Sometimes all of the above.
All of them mission-driven. Take Nell Lewis, Carver's Director of Culture. I grew up in this community right across the tracks. I've been working at Carver for a total of 18 years. My son graduated from Carver in 2022. He was Mr. Carver. She had lived through the transitions, seen the protests, heard the skepticism. The community didn't believe, who are these people?
They're coming from out of town. They're white. They don't care. And I mean, this school never had the data it's had now. Yes, we had sports championships, but the number of scholars that are enrolling in college and actually finishing is really amazing. Let me put some numbers to the academic success Nell mentioned.
Last year, Carver earned an A for academic growth from the state and a B for overall academic performance. For the more wonky education stats folks, Carver ranked second in the city for open enrollment high schools, all non-magnet schools, for students receiving mastery or advanced performance on the state exams. The year before, they had the highest student academic growth in the city.
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Chapter 5: How did the state and community clash over the future of Carver High School?
They've embraced academic rigor and band culture, college prep, and Friday night football. Carver showed the city what happens when you try to rebuild a neighborhood without its traditions. And then they showed us what's possible when you bring those traditions back and build on them rather than around them. Next time on Where the Schools Went. Every teacher in New Orleans is fired.
You lost your house. You lost everything. You don't have a job. But it was just nothing to come back to. When you think about the loss of health insurance that accompanied that, as people are literally trying to rebuild their lives. That's next time on Where the Schools Went. Where the Schools Went is an original podcast from The Branch in partnership with Midas Touch. I'm your host, Ravi Gupta.
This show is executive produced by me, Ravi Gupta. Our senior producers are Kate Malikoff and Pallavi Katamasu. Research and fact-checking by Ethan Macy Cushman and Katie Nelligan. Additional support by Liz Smith and Leah Sutherland. Post sound and music by Chapter 4. Sound design and mix by Sarah Gibalaska. And sound editing by Natalie Escudero.
Original music by Kareem Dwady with Kevin Merringer on trombone and tuba and Eric Biondo on trumpet. Herr Budjettiminister, kuinka neuvottelut sujuivat? Kiteytän lopputuloksen kahteen sanaan. Suk C. Voitteko hieman tarkentaa? Suk C, sau, va, mo, no. Mitä nyt hiihtämiseen tarvitaan? Sitä, että toimittaja on hyvä ja suk C siitä Pudkesporttiin.
Sieltä saa kaikki hiihtovermeet nyt liikuttavan halvalla. Pudkesport.fi.
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