‘Drenched in the past:’ the evolution of market-oriented reforms in New Orleans

Abstract

As the city with the largest charter-school market share in the United States, New Orleans, Louisiana exemplifies market-oriented models in education. For a city that is so ‘drenched in the past,’ the reform movement in New Orleans typically neglects historical context, often dismissing the education system pre-Katrina as simply corrupt and dysfunctional. This is an incomplete story. While national narratives and news media tend to downplay these features, there is no local consensus on the reforms. There is mistrust on both sides of the debate, and a growing opposition movement, which arises from decades of racial and political struggles, corrupt public officials, and previous experiences with the state exerting power over locally elected school boards, which disenfranchised African-Americans in New Orleans in particular. Although the new, post-Katrina educational system significantly altered political dynamics, it has not eradicated politics altogether. In this paper, I conduct a policy history of education reforms in New Orleans, connecting the historical and political context to current reform efforts. As researchers evaluate the effectiveness of the new reforms in terms of student achievement, it is important also to examine their impacts on communities and the democratic control of schools, as well as how they reproduce or break from historical patterns of political struggle and inequality.

Keywords:

• politics
• history
• policy
• New Orleans
• marketization
• charter schools

Notes

1. In addition, at every charter-school board meeting I attended, I was the only member of the public aside from reporters from The Lens. These reporters, however, have had difficulty accessing public charter meetings however, with schedule changes, locked doors, and other hurdles. See Hasselle (2013) for more details.