DID YOU KNOW?

1. Over 49,000 students attend public schools in New Orleans

2. 82% of students are economically disadvantaged

3. 91% are students of color

4. 12% are students with disabilities

5. 98% of students attend charter schools.

6. 78 schools in New Orleans are public charter schools.

7. 7 schools are governed by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

8. 1 school is governed by the Louisiana legislature (NOCCA)

OUR CHALLENGE

The challenge is multi pronged and interconnected.

1. New Orleans’ history of economic inequality and racism has resulted in a segregated education system.

2. The top-down recovery post-Katrina created a highly politicized education system that disenfranchised many community members.

3. The education system, which is predicated on recreating outcomes that have not served us in previous generations, lacks the creativity and vision necessary to see beyond the world we live in today.

Why is this a continued challenge? 

We don’t have people with the creativity and vision to move beyond the current condition. 

1. Selective admission school leaders are just trying to run schools and keep them open. All of the other schools were remade in their model without the same resources or ability to select. 

2. Educators may have the creativity but lack the organized and coordinated resources necessary to support. Success relies on the incredible will of teachers.

3. Parents have dreams but the levels of inequality are too burdensome to fully carry.

WHAT YOU CAN DO / WHO CAN HELP

1. Make changes to the accountability system at the state level. Give leaders and educators the opportunity to do more liberatory work.

2. Make direct investments to the most vulnerable families -- especially those most impacted by cycles of harm. Fewer people living in poverty means more people exploring higher visions for themselves.

3. Resource networks like graduate schools that can build coalitions around more liberated approaches to pedagogy.

4. Support community organizing processes that allow and provide clarity around their mission and the ways structural racism impacts learning institutions.

WHAT DO POLITICAL LEADERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR SECTOR?

1. The ways in which structural racism and structural oppression are alive today, and how they manifest in our institutions.

2. That poverty and inequality are optional (i.e. they are circumstantial and not immovable states of nature). We, including our political leaders, need to be able to envision a world in which these things are solved. Our failures in policy are often failures of imagination, in that we can only see the symptoms of our current situation and not possibilities for alternatives.

3. Indigenous ways of governing education. Our ancestors had more sustainable and equitable ways of distributing education. A return to indigeneity is preferable, and leaders should seek examples of schools that have historically and contemporarily provided examples of better education.

WHAT ARE YOUR LOCAL POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS?

1. The district should hold schools accountable and help them by providing robust support to stabilize and make it to the next level. 

2. The district should become a place where leaders, including CEOs, academic directors, etc., can find support. Additionally, the strongest charter operators should be leveraged when schools are not performing well, to pull resources and help them get back on stronger footing. 

3. The district needs to develop a truly decentralized vision for the charter school ecosystem. There should be schools that fall outside of the two existing models (traditional and hard line college prep). The charters should operate with an eye toward genuinely unique models. 

   Federal and state policies govern accountability, but that accountability should be less punitive and more supportive. Accountability should be based on qualitative performance tests that are not purely academic in nature. Schools are currently held accountable generally for academic performance in four areas. The purpose of education is much broader than these four areas, and schools should be evaluated with this in mind.

WHAT ARE YOUR STATE POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS?

1. Schools are ground zero for identifying child poverty. Schools should become aggressive lobbying organizations aimed at ending childhood poverty.

WHAT ARE YOUR FEDERAL POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS?

1. George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind (which ironically closed schools and literally left children behind) mandated all states adopt punitive accountability measures based on standardized testing. Barack Obama’s administration adopted slightly better policy measures, but the issue remains. Research tells us that the majority of educational disparities are economic in nature. Therefore, educational initiatives must center equity to reduce these disparities.