Here are two spot-on rebuttals to this nonsense. First, one by Peter Cook:

Well, Andrea Gabor is at it again.

A few years ago, Andrea Gabor wrote an article for Newsweek that maligned the transformation of New Orleans' public schools since Hurricane Katrina. At the time, I wrote a response that exposed the "inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and glaring omissions of fact" in her Newsweek piece – issues that made it abundantly clear that Gabor was "pushing her political agenda at the expense of her journalistic principles."

Now, as we prepare to mark the 10th Anniversary of Katrina, Gabor has taken to the pages of the New York Times to add insult to injury with "The Myth of the New Orleans School Makeover," another cheap shot at the accomplishments of so many hardworking New Orleans educators.

Once again, I feel compelled respond. Below, I set the record straight on several of the misleading points Gabor makes in her latest attack…

…Finally, the most infuriating statement in Gabor's entire piece is her conclusion:

"For outsiders, the biggest lesson of New Orleans is this: It is wiser to invest in improving existing education systems than to start from scratch. Privatization may improve outcomes for some students, but it has hurt the most disadvantaged pupils."

A note to Professor Gabor: We didn't have a choice between improving our school system or starting from scratch. Our school system, our homes, our livelihoods were wiped out in a flood that covered over 80% of New Orleans.

In the aftermath of our nation's greatest disaster, we came together to rebuild our great city, but we refused to rebuild a school system that had marginalized the poorest children in our community for far too long. Instead, we embarked on a new vision for public education in New Orleans and we took a path that doesn't dovetail with the prerogatives of education reform opponents like Andrea Gabor.

Today, a decade after Katrina, tens of thousands of children are receiving a better education and have vastly improved life opportunities because of our collective work – and a pessimistic screed in the New York Times is never going to change that fact