Before the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina and its flooding, concentrated poverty in New Orleans was eroding and undermining the economic, social and educational infrastructure of the city and its neighborhood schools. Fixing the school system which suffered years of corruption, bad management and abysmal academic performance, remains one of the highest priorities in the rebirth of the city. Profound hope lay in the small cluster of charter schools, and selective admission schools or City-wide access schools, the latter of which had a long history of producing success in New Orleans. Post-flooding, the creation of the Algiers Association meant that schools would enroll anyone if space allowed. So, the dynamics of high educational expectations in New Orleans poses a self-fulfilling prophecy of de facto segregated education in Orleans Parish Pubic educational reform. The paper examines whose interests and what interests are served by the new charter system and how these interests support educational access and opportunity.