Charter School “Miracle”? Youth Participatory Action Research and Education Reform in Post-Katrina New Orleans

• In Event: Reclaiming Education: Youth Counternarratives in the Neoliberal Reform Era

Abstract

Objectives

This paper presents critical evaluations of the New Orleans “miracle” from the perspectives of youth, identifying and examining disparities within the much-touted New Orleans charter school “miracle.” Assuming that our nation’s appraisal of New Orleans’ reform project will have implications for the future of U.S. public education, it is critical to evaluate the effects of education policy changes since 2005 from the perspectives of youth.

Hurricane Katrina provided an opportunity for charter school proponents to radically transform the New Orleans school system into the “The Greatest Education Lab” (Smith, 2007). The combination of privatization through charter contracts, standards-based accountability, operational autonomy for schools, and market-style choice has altered the public school system. The city has the first major urban school system in which a majority of students attend schools privately operated and governed by unelected independent volunteer boards. Calling these reforms a “miracle,” charter school advocates now use New Orleans as a model to advance the neoliberal education agenda throughout the U.S.

Perspectives/Theoretical Framework

Drastic reforms following Katrina were made without stakeholders’ consent, leading to a fragmented school system with limited opportunities for residents to democratically engage with school governance. Informed by the libratory principles of youth participatory action research (Cammarota & Fine, 2008), this project was grounded in the principle that a critical, youth-led evaluation of schools can produce important insights in the state of education in New Orleans and articulate innovative solutions to improve schools. YPAR is characterized by the following three principles:
• Collective investigation of a problem;
• Reliance on indigenous knowledge to better understand that problem;
• Desire to take individual and/or collective action to deal with stated problems (Morrell, 2008, 157).
YPAR also emerges from theories of critical literacy and pedagogy, which counter antidemocratic and oppressive system (Freire, 1993).

Methodology/Data

Since June 2010, youth members of a community-based organization in New Orleans East implemented a YPAR project to evaluate their schools in a youth-based accountability project. Based on 40 interviews of peers, the team identified six dimensions of quality education - physical environment, instructional quality and learning, academic rigor, student support services, quality bilingual education, parental involvement, and textbook availability. Using these dimensions, which significantly depart from state test-based accountability models, they constructed a comprehensive survey and collected 415 surveys from youth enrolled in six high schools which were selected because they enroll a large number of students from New Orleans East.

Results

Across all six dimensions, the study found numerous deficits in the New Orleans school system according to the youth-constructed standards of education excellence. We also found significant disparities in the quality of education accessible to students on the basis of school, race, income, geography and language. As a consequence of this project of transformative resistance (Giroux, 2001), youth leaders are currently engaging New Orleans school administrators. Empowered with research, they are meeting with the new Recovery School District superintendent John White, and reclaiming their rights to participate as democratic citizens in the school governance structure.

Authors

• Jacob Cohen, Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association

• OiYan A. Poon, Loyola University Chicago