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Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I'm your host, Julia Galef, and I'm here with today's guest, Nirov Kingsland.

Nirov was on the founding team of and then later the CEO of New Schools for New Orleans,

which essentially rebuilt the public school system in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,

and created the first public school system in the country that was almost entirely charter schools.

So it's now one of the big, maybe highest profile charter school success stories in the United States. Now, Nirov is managing partner of the city fund, which has recently raised $200 million to work with a

select group of cities to create more innovative public school systems around the country.

So today, Nirov and I are going to be talking about what he's done, what he's learned, and the evidence for and maybe against the effectiveness of charter schools.

Nirov, welcome to rationally speaking.

Great. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

So you were in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, essentially rebuilding the public school system. What was that like? Was it chaotic? Did you have to essentially start from scratch? Yeah, it was extremely chaotic and incredibly tragic. I mean, most of the city was underwater. Over a thousand New Orleans lost their lives. Kids were suffering from high degrees of trauma.

But out of that tragedy, we had a chance to rethink public schooling in the city. And a group of

...