The Waters Stay Troubled: A Dialogue on Race, Education, Researcher Accountability and Black Political Struggle in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

Ten years after the (un)natural disaster and despondent response to Hurricane Katrina by the U.S. federal government, the educational landscape of New Orleans has permanently shifted to one deeply steeped in the current neoliberal turn in K–12 schooling. The New Orleans Recovery District (RSD) currently operates as a district of 43 independent charter networks, which currently include 107 schools. Because RSD is the first of its kind in the nation, venture capitalists, state and federal politicians along with school officials are supporting and monitoring it closely with hopes and visions for the “future” of public education.

Keywords::

• Charter schools
• education
• neoliberalism
• New Orleans
• race
• researcher accountability
• social justice

About the Authors

David Stovall is Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He studies the influence of race in urban education, community development, and housing. His work investigates the significance of race in the quality of schools located in communities that are changing both racially and economically. From a practical and theoretical perspective, his research draws from Critical Race Theory, educational policy analysis, sociology, urban planning, political science, community organizing, and youth culture. He is the co-editor of The Handbook of Social Justice in Education (2009).

Adrienne Dixson is Associate Professor of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Education. Her primary research interest focuses on educational equity in urban schooling contexts, applying a Critical Race Theory framework. She is interested in how educational equity is mediated by school reform policies in the urban south and is examining school reform in post-Katrina New Orleans, how local actors make sense of and experience those reform policies and how those policies become or are “racialized.”

Notes

K. L. Buras, J. Randels, and K. Y. Salaam, Pedagogy, Policy and the Privatized City: Stories of Dispossession and Defiance from New Orleans (New York: Teachers College, 2010); K. L. Buras, Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2015).

D. Macedo, Literacies of Power: What Americans are Not Allowed to Know (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994); C. R. Hale, ed., Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship (Los Angeles: University of California, 2008); J. Sudbury and M. Okazawa-Bey, eds, Activist Scholarship: Antiracism, Feminism and Social Change (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2009).

Dr. Dixson’s comment referring to “yesterday” is in reference to her 2015 presentation at the Critical Race Studies in Education Association’s Annual Conference held in Nashville, Tennessee. Her presentation was on education and community resistance in New Orleans.

The work in 2005 is in reference to my participation on the design team for Social Justice high school (a school founded by community members who went on a 19-day hunger strike), which opened in the Fall of 2005.

N. Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Picador, 2008).

The “kitty” is in reference to Bid Whist; a card game popularized in African American communities throughout U.S. regions in the South, East, and Midwest. The “kitty” is the set of six cards dealt outside of the twelve cards dealt to four individual players. The four players are divided into two teams. The goal of each team is to make bids for the kitty. Once the highest bid is made, that player is awarded the kitty, which can either strengthen or weaken the team’s chance of winning the game (often referenced as “making the bid”). When someone asks the question “who has the kitty?” outside of the game of Bid Whist, it is usually inquiring about the person or group with decision-making power.

Buras, Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space, 45.

Miller McCoy is a charter high school in RSD that is an all-boys academy specifically for African American males. Similar to Urban Prep Academy in Chicago, it boasts high graduation rates and college entrance. An unspoken undercurrent about the schools is the fact that while many gain college admission, there are hosts of young people who are pushed out of both schools for the myriad of reasons (low grades, failure to comply with rules, etc.).

F. Waitoller J. Radinsky, A. Trzaska, and D. M. Maggin, A Longitudinal Comparison of Enrollment Patterns of Students Receiving Special Education Services in Chicago Charter and Neighborhood Public Schools. Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education (Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago, 2014).

Popeye’s is a fast-food chain originating in New Orleans.

Personal notes, August 4, 2015.

Angola is the oldest prison farm in the United States. Located in Angola, Louisiana, it stands in infamy for having the longest sentences for solitary confinement. When residents refer to some schools in RSD as “Baby Angola,” they are referencing harsh discipline policies that govern the institution.

In many low-income urban communities throughout the United States, charter schools adopt harsh policies that are reminiscent of processes used with incarcerated persons. Some of these policies include requiring students to walk in a straight line between classroom breaks, silent lunch periods (where students are not allowed to talk), and standing in a position that resembles someone being frisked by law enforcement before beginning classroom instruction.

S. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford, 1997).