Even before the 2005 "Disaster in the Delta"--as the devastation and loss wrought by the category-three hurricane known as Katrina came to be known--statistics emerged about the aggressive educational neglect of Louisiana's African American schoolchildren. The harrowing data about the inadequacies being as racialized as the distribution of aid in the storm's aftermath are chilling indeed. Yet, they have not dissuaded the more than thirty contributors to this volume from viewing Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity and a challenge to transform schools and society for the good of the entire United States. Divided into three sections ("Education and School Contexts," "Preparing Professionals for the Possible," and "The Social Dynamics of Education Reform"), the seventeen chapters of "The Children Hurricane Katrina Left Behind" discuss what is essential for rebuilding urban schools in New Orleans as well as the nation, engaging the nuanced nexus of social events and educational policy (e.g., No Child Left Behind) as it relates to the preparation of professional educators and the future of America's schools. As Linda Darling-Hammond notes in her foreword, each chapter speaks "powerfully and poignantly to [centuries of educational neglect and failed social policies] and to what we can and must do about it." This book contains the following chapters: (1) Countering Aggressive Neglect: Creating a Transformative Educational Agenda in the Wake of Katrina (Linda Darling-Hammond); (2) Crossing the Waters: Katrina and the Other Great Migration-Lessons for African American K-12 Students' Education (Kassie Freeman); (3) Now They're Wet: Hurricane Katrina as Metaphor for Social and Educational Neglect (Gloria Ladson-Billings); (4) What Hurricane Katrina Uncovered about Schooling in America (Jacqueline Jordan Irvine); (5) Hurricane Katrina: Catastrophe or Opportunity? (Jacqueline Leonard); (6) Still Waters Run Deep: Cracks in the Educational Pipeline for African American Students Post-Hurricane Katrina (Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher and Vernon C. Polite); (7) Drowning beneath the Rising Tide: The Common Plight of Public Schools, Disadvantaged Students, and African American Males (M. Christopher Brown, II, T. Elon Dancy, II and James Earl Davis); (8) Reflections on Educational Equity in Post-Katrina New Orleans (Vivian L. Gadsden and Susan Fuhrman); (9) Disastrous Opportunity (Ira Lit and Jon Snyder); (10) Post-Katrina Educational Contexts: Breaking the Rules (M. Jayne Fleener, Jerry Willis, Sister Judith Brun, and Kristy Hebert); (11) Leadership for the New Normal (Linda Schaak Distad); (12) Benign Neglect or Deliberate Exclusion? Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina (P. Rudy Mattai and Jacqueline M. Williams); (13) For They Are Us: "Tools'' for a Post-Katrina Curriculum and Community (Pamela K. Smith and Pat Williams-Boyd); (14) Creating World-Class Teachers: Prospects for Katrina Recovery and Beyond (Sharon Porter Robinson and Penny Engel); (15) Tikkun Olam (Arthur E. Levine); (16) Wastebasket Kids and Katrina: Reflections From a "Jim Crow'' Child (Dianne Smith); (17) Can You Hear Me Now? Transforming Today's Challenges to Position America for the Future (Mary Hatwood Futrell); (18) A Continuing Katrina for At-Risk Children: How We Can Make It Right (Arthur E. Wise and Jane A. Leibbrand); and (19) Children Drowning in Our Tears (Lynn Huntley).