After Hurricane Katrina, the Recovery School District established by the state legislature and approved by Governor Kathleen Blanco (D), took away more than 80 schools in the city from the Orleans Parish School Board. This year, all of the city’s public schools are charters. This essay seeks to provide history of public education in New Orleans, a report of what happened after Hurricane Katrina, and the future of public education in New Orleans and why so many locals insist their voices are heard.

New Orleans, a town in the South, is of course no different from other cities in the South—it has certainly enjoyed its share of racism. Public education in the state of Louisiana was never intended to educate African Americans; it was “instead considered the property of southern whites” (Buras, 2011, p. 299). In fact, the first high school for African Americans opened in 1917 (Buras, 2013, p. 131). Whites controlled the government in New Orleans for a very long time. New Orleans still holds the values instilled in racism, even after the abolishment of Jim Crow laws. Whites move to surrounding suburbs, which left New Orleans controlled by African Americans. With white flight to suburbs, however, educational and economic systems began a downward spiral; “From 1950-2000, New Orleans lost two-thirds of its white residents and state disinvestment in black education continued” (Buras, 2013, p. 131).

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, an overwhelming majority of black teachers taught in the classrooms. “Black teachers with the same level of education and experience as white teachers were paid substantially less” (Buras, 2013, p. 131). Black teachers were paid less, and often taught in schools with poor infrastructure and maintenance, with an overcrowding of students. Black teachers made up a substantial chuck of the middle class in the city. However, schools in New Orleans for years received failing grades, as student achievement on standardized testing was low. Government leaders, local and state, needed a phenomenon to fuel education reform in New Orleans, and they received that phenomenon in 2005.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents were displaced. However, while many were thinking about the loss of their homes and trying to connect with family and friends, policymakers in Louisiana were busy getting together and developing a plan for reconstructing the public education system in New Orleans.

Fmr. Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D-Louisiana)

Governor Kathleen Blanco signed, between late August and late October, Executive Orders 58 and 79 which suspended “certain provisions of charter school law, such as the need to consult and obtain the votes of affected faculty, staff, and parents before converting an existing public school into a charter school” (Buras, 2013, p. 128). After calling an emergency legislative session, the legislature modified the definition of a “failing” public school in order for more New Orleans public schools to meet the definition, therefore allowing those schools to be in the hands of the new Recovery School District. In January 2006, over 7,500 teachers and other school staff would be fired in exchange for “new ‘human capital’” hired later that year (Buras, 2013, p. 128).

The preparation for New Orleans as a charter school district also occurred at the local level. Mayor Ray Nagin, currently in prison serving 10 years on counts of bribery, money laundering, and tax evasion, “established the Bring New Orleans Back Commission…which recommended the creation of the nation’s first charter school district” (Buras, 2013, p. 128). With local and state governments on board, millions of federal dollars poured into the charter school effort for New Orleans. People like Bill Gates and prominent business leaders like Leslie Jacobs preached the New Orleans method as a model for nation-wide development of urban areas. The government manufactured this, and wealthy business owners advocated for it, and where were the people impacted? They were displaced, scattered across the United States.

Families gathered at a local school to reserve their spot for the upcoming school year registration.

What Buras describes as the model for educational reform in New Orleans, one claimed by “conscious capitalists” as in the “best interest of still-displaced communities,” others blatantly reject. A 1^st grade student funneling her way through the Recovery School district wanted to attend the “Akili Academy” but found out during the summer that it was “already too late.” She instead attended a school “considered to be a ‘dumping ground’ for the children not selected by charter schools” (Buras, 2011, p. 303).

These two articles, in tandem, brutally reject the claim that New Orleans, as a charter school district, is a success. Not only do they see trouble with parents in navigating the system, or problems with laying off a bunch of experienced African American school teachers, but they also see the problems and the mindset of those in power to audaciously ignore the voices of people who do not agree and who exploit students at the expense of promoting ideals of capitalism, which is ironic, at best.

References

• Buras, K. L.; & Urban South Grassroots Research Collective. (2013). New Orleans education reform: A Guide for Cities or a Warning for Communities? (Grassroots Lessons Learned, 2005-2012). Berkeley Review of Education, 4(1). 123-160. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3dd2726h
• Buras, K. L. (2011). Race, Charter Schools, and Conscious Capitalism: On the Spatial Politics of Whiteness as Property (and the Unconscionable Assault on Black New Orleans). Harvard Educational Review, 81(2). 296-330. Retrieved from: http://ezproxy.bowdoin.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/874155316?accountid=9681
• [Photo]. Retrieved December 19, 2014, from http://www2.southeastern.edu/NewsEvents/PublicInfoOffice/commencement-blanco.html
• [Photo]. Retrieved December 8, 2014, from: http://apps.npr.org/the-end-of-neighborhood-schools/
• Ibid.