NEW ORLEANS — A few years ago, the students at G.W. Carver High School held a protest in front of the school to object to its disciplinary policies. “We thought some of the rules were extreme,” Dominique Newton, then a sophomore, recalled. Jerel Bryant, Carver’s principal, told me, “In the moment, I did not look upon it fondly.”

But the students were right. The rules were extreme. Students walking between classes had to stay on the right side of the hallway, for example. Most alarmingly, during the year of the protest, more than 60 percent of Carver’s students were suspended for at least one day. Getting suspended was normal.

Carver is a charter school — a public school run not by a centralized board but by an independent operator. After Hurricane Katrina, virtually every public school in New Orleans became a charter, in an attempt to fix one of the nation’s worst districts. And the academic results have been impressive, as I described last week. Students are faring much better in reading, math, science and social studies, and more are graduating from high school and college.

In today’s column, though, I’m going to talk a bit about the shortcomings in New Orleans. Along the way, I want to make a plea for thinking about the debate over education reform in a more nuanced, less absolutist way than often happens.

There are two high-profile camps on education reform. Staunch defenders — who tend to be conservative — support not only charter schools but virtually all school choice, including vouchers for private schools. They see market competition as a cure-all. On the other side, the harshest critics of reform — who are largely progressive — oppose nearly any alternative to traditional schools. They view charters as a nefarious project of billionaires, and they think the academic progress is statistical hooey.