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Abstract
This article uses a research framework based in critical race methodology to analyze and emplot narrative and counternarrative themes in public discourse around education reform in New Orleans. It examines narratives from research literature, popular media, and teacher recruitment materials, including the theme of the open-access charter school system as an innovative solution to the failures of pre-Katrina neighborhood schools. It finally argues for the necessity of counternarratives grounded in the testimonies and lived experiences of parents, teachers and students navigating and surviving within a rapidly evolving pedagogical landscape.
About the Authors
Jessica Baker Kee is a PhD candidate in the Art Education program at Penn State University. She completed her BA in Art History at Duke University and her MAEd in Art Education at East Carolina University. She has also worked as a museum educator, a public and private school art teacher, a federal disaster relief agent, and an educational research consultant. Her research is rooted in arts-based, narrative and autobiographical methods and explores constructions of identity and trauma within pedagogical environments, examining the impacts of race, class, and institutional policy on the lived experiences of art educators and their students.
Notes
Rashida H. Govan, Andre M. Perry, and Debra Vaughan, “The State of Black Education: Ten Years after the Storm of Reform,” in State of Black New Orleans: 10 Years Post-Katrina (Urban League of Greater New Orleans, 2015); Jaclyn Zubrzycki, “New Teachers Search for Place in New Orleans,” Education Week 32, no. 29 (2013).
The Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives, The State of Public Education in New Orleans (New Orleans, LA: Tulane University, 2014).
Ibid.
Beth Sondel, “Raising Citizens or Raising Test Scores?: Teach for America and ‘No Excuses’ Charter Schools in Post-Katrina New Orleans” (doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2013).
Erik W. Robelen, “New Teachers are the New Orleans Norm,” Education Week 27, no. 12 (2007): 1.
Jed Horne, “New Schools in New Orleans,” Education Next 11, no. 2 (2011).
Kristen Buras, “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, no. 2 (2011); Kenneth J. Saltman, Schooling and the Politics of Disaster (New York: Routledge, 2007).
Karri A. Holley and Julia Colyar, “Rethinking Texts: Narrative and the Construction of Qualitative Research,” Educational Researcher 38, no. 9 (2009): 681.
Jeffrey R. Henig, Spin Cycle: How Research is used in Policy Debates—The Case of Charter Schools (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008).
Lisa M. Stulberg, “African American School Choice and the Current Race Politics of Charter Schooling: Lessons from History,” Race and Social Problems 7 (2015), 36.
Michael W. Apple, “Comparing Neoliberal Projects and Inequality in Education,” Comparative Education 37, no. 4 (2001): 413; Katherine B. Hankins and Deborah G. Martin, “Charter Schools and Urban Regimes in Neoliberal Context: Making Workers and New Spaces in Metropolitan Atlanta,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30, no. 3 (2006): 544; Henig, Spin Cycle, 53.
Lisa M. Stulberg, “What History Offers Progressive Choice Scholarship,” in The Emancipatory Promise of Charter Schools: Toward a Progressive Politics of School Choice, ed. Eric Rofes and Lisa M. Stulberg (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), 31.
Cowen Institute, The State of Public Education.
Nevbahar Ertas, “Policy Narratives and Public Opinion Concerning Charter Schools,” Politics and Policy 43, no. 3 (2015): 431.
Daniel G. Solórzano and Tara J. Yosso. “Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research,” Qualitative Inquiry 8, no. 1 (2002).
Roderick L. Carey, “A Cultural Analysis of the Achievement Gap Discourse: Challenging the Language and Labels used in the Work of School Reform,” Urban Education 49, no. 4 (2013).
Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Just What is Critical Race Theory and What’s it Doing in a Nice Field Like Education?” in Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education, ed. Edward Taylor, David Gillborn, and Gloria Ladson-Billings (New York: Routledge, 2009); Richard Delgado, “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative,” Michigan Law Review (1989).
G. W. Ryan, and H. R. Bernard, “Data Management and Analysis Methods,” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 789.
Maria Alexander, “Reinventing a Broken Wheel?” Social Policy 37, no. 3–4 (2007); Allison Carr-Chellman et al., “The Perceptions of New Orleans Educators on the Process of Rebuilding the New Orleans School System After Katrina,” Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR) 13, no. 2 (2008); Buras, “Race, Charter Schools”; Adrienne D. Dixson, Kristen L. Buras, and Elizabeth K. Jeffers, “The Color of Reform,” Qualitative Inquiry 21, no. 3 (2015); Horne, “New Schools”; Alice Huff, “Reforming the City,” The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien 57, no. 3 (2013); Daniel Kiel, “It Takes a Hurricane,” The Journal of Law and Education 40, no. 1 (2011); Catherine Michna, “Stories at the Center,” American Quarterly 61, no. 3; Eileen Carlton Parsons and Kea Turner, “The Importance of History in the Racial Inequality and Racial Inequity in Education,” Negro Educational Review 65, no. 1–4 (2014); Robelen, “New Teachers”; Robelen, “New Orleans Seizes Momentum,” Education Week 30, no. 1 (2010); Kenneth J. Saltman, Schooling and the Politics of Disaster (New York: Routledge, 2007); Michael Schwam-Baird and Laura Mogg, “Is Education Reform in New Orleans Working?” Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law 11, no. 2 (2010); Zubrzycki, “New Teachers.”
Stephanie Banchero, “Turnaround in New Orleans,” Wall Street Journal (September 30, 2013); Wayne D’Orio, “New Orleans Schools: 5 Years Later,” Scholastic Administr@tor 10, no. 2 (2010); Robert Garda, “The Politics of Education Reform,” Journal of Law and Education 40, no. 1 (2011); Zoe Sullivan, “New Orleans Boasts Rising Test Scores but Critics Ask, Who’s Left Out?” The Louisiana Weekly (2012).
KIPP New Orleans, New Schools for New Orleans, Teach for America.
Dana Brinson, Bryan C. Hassel, Lyria Boast, and Neerav Kingsland, “New Orleans-Style Education Reform: A Guide for Cities,” New Schools for New Orleans (2012); The Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives, The State of Public Education in New Orleans (New Orleans, LA: Tulane University, 2013); Jennifer L. Steele, Georges Vernez, Michael A. Gottfried, and Michael Schwam-Baird, “Perceptions of Charter and Traditional Schools in New Orleans” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2011).
Henig, Spin Cycle, 2008.
Pauline Lipman, “Contesting the city: neoliberal urbanism and the cultural politics of education reform in Chicago”, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 32, no. 2 (2011): 226.
“Teach for America: Greater New Orleans-Louisiana Delta,” Teach for America, http://www.teachforamerica.org/where-we-work/greater-new-orleans-louisiana-delta (accessed April 14, 2014).
Garda, “Politics of Education Reform”; Schwam-Baird & Mogg, “Is Education Reform Working?”.
“New Schools for New Orleans,” New Schools for New Orleans, http://www.newschoolsforneworleans.org (accessed April 14, 2014).
Horne, “New Schools in New Orleans,” 6.
Kiel, “It Takes a Hurricane,” 130.
Garda, “Politics of Education Reform.”
Schwam-Baird and Mogg, “Is Education Reform Working?,” 167.
Brian Beabout et al., “The Perceptions of New Orleans Educators on the Process of Rebuilding the New Orleans School System after Katrina,” Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR) 13, no. 2–3 (2008): 227–28.
Buras, “Race, Charter Schools,” 308.
Brinson et al., “New Orleans-Style Reform,” 12.
Horne, “New Schools in New Orleans,” 7.
D’Orio, “New Orleans Schools,” 47.
Brinson et al., “New Orleans-Style Reform”; Kiel, “It Takes a Hurricane.”
Dixson, Buras, and Jeffers, “Color of Reform,”, 296.
Parsons and Turner, “The Importance of History.”
Alexander, “Reinventing a Broken Wheel?”; Akers, “Separate and Unequal”; Beabout et al., “Perceptions of Educators.”
Dixson, Buras, and Jeffers, “Color of Reform.”
Huff, “Reforming the City,” 312.
Michna, “Stories at the Center,” 535.
Buras, “Race, Charter Schools,” 310.
Cowen Institute, State of Public Education, 2013.
Zubrzycki, “New Teachers,” 1.
Carr-Chellman et al., “Perceptions of Educators.”
Banchero, “Turnaround in New Orleans”; Jessica B. Kee, Stephen Worthington, Trung Nguyen, and Chris Hippenmeyer, Charter Schools and the Exclusion of Students with Disabilities (unpublished manuscript, The Pennsylvania State University, 2014).
Buras, “Race, Charter Schools”; Huff, “Reforming the City”; Michna, “Stories at the Center.”
Govan, Perry, and Vaughan, “State of Black Education,” 86.
Stulberg, “African American School Choice,” 37.
Amy Stuart Wells, “The Social Context of Charter Schools,” in Handbook of Research on School Choice, ed. Mark Berends, Matthew G. Springer, Dale Ballou, and Herbert J. Walberg (New York: Routledge, 2009), 169; Apple, “Comparing Neoliberal Projects,” 419–20.