"It Isn't for Us!" African American Perspectives on the Charter School Authorization Process

• In Event: Smoke, Mirrors, and Education Practices: "Access" as Gatekeeping for Students and Communities of Color

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes:

This year’s theme and conference call charges researchers “to create knowledge that…[meets the] challenges of education in increasingly diverse democracies.” Therefore, this project aims to heed the call by examining the charter school authorization process in post-Katrina New Orleans. The charter school movement, generally, and the educational reform politics in post-Katrina New Orleans, specifically, index and illuminate the deeply critical issues of race, access, power, and representation in the U.S. polity. Charter schools have been herald as the progeny of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and incubators for innovation, yet have sustained consistent critiques (Buras, 2014;Author, 2013; Scott,2013). Beyond those critiques, this project explores the process of approving charter schools and situates it as a gatekeeping mechanism and site for racial reproduction. Cocooning this research lies the question: how might access to ‘race neutral’ policies and procedures produce ‘race-based’ effects? The purpose of this paper is to explore the subjugated knowledges of African American charter applicants with hopes that their narratives will pose “a problem for Western consciousness” (Mbembe, 2001, p.2) and democracies, informing policy efforts to make the charter authorization process more equitable and just.

Theoretical Framework:

This study is framed using critical race theory. The author utilizes CRT’s notions of whiteness as property (Harris, 1993) and critique of liberalism (Delgado & Stefancic, 2000). These analytical lens help to elucidate how race and more specifically whiteness is central to the social organization of power and democratic (im)possibilities.

Methods,techniques, or modes of inquiry:

The author conducted a year-long case study of the charter authorization and application process in post-Katrina New Orleans. Participant narratives are analyzed using CRT.

Data sources, evidence:

This inquiry relies on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with community based, African American charter school applicants and charter reviewers, and archival data from local media sources.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions:

The data suggests, while African American community groups have access to the “race neutral” charter school authorization and application process, the process is racialized. White liberal forms of cultural/social/political capital are privileged and used as the standard for "competition." As such, disparate levels of approvals for native New Orleanian, African American community based groups and veteran educators occur.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study of the work:

If Apple (2006) is correct in his premonition that charter schools are here to stay and if we are to take current education policy—such as Race to the Top—as indicators that charters are here to stay, for now, then scholars and citizens committed to ensuring equity and justice must ensure that charter schools reflect counter-hegemonic realities. The author contributes to educational research and public policy conversations by examining a lesser known aspect of charter school policy. While lesser explored, the charter school authorization process is a critical site for negotiating and delimiting the democratic possibilities of schools to come.

Author

• Kevin Lawrence Henry, University of Wisconsin - Madison