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Whose Choice? The Strategies and Results of the Charter School System in New Orleans

Sun, April 30, 2:15 to 3:45pm, Grand Hyatt San Antonio, Floor: Second Floor, Lone Star Ballroom Salon E

Abstract

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city of New Orleans, costing lives, destroying property, and displacing large numbers of mostly minority people. Shortly thereafter, the city’s public schools shifted dramatically, becoming a nearly 100% charter system by 2015. This study analyzes the impacts of the market-driven charter school system in New Orleans. Using a mixed-methods approach, research reveals a “flipped” choice model in which schools mainly choose students, resulting in students attending schools in descending tiers based on their neighborhood, test scores, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and discipline record. As this panel suggests, the application of market-based strategies has produced increased levels of stratification in New Orleans’ schools.

Conceptually, contextual factors at the student, school, district, and national levels create an environment that, in many U.S. cities, promotes on-going inequity of students’ educational experiences. To uncover the impact of these factors, our research questions ask how students experience the educational environment in New Orleans. To answer the questions, the study employs a mixed-methods model, using document analysis, qualitative, and quantitative research. The document review revealed the historical, political, and contextual factors contributing to school reform’s evolution in New Orleans. The qualitative interviews targeted students, parents, educators, administrators, and community members to gather different perspectives on the strategies, processes, and impacts of the reform model. Quantitative data on student and school demographics and outcomes permitted comparisons between system-wide statistics to in-depth qualitative findings.

To understand the complex phenomena in New Orleans schools, we used an inductive, grounded research approach to refine the complexity of our findings throughout data collection and analysis (Charmaz, 1995). We used both inductive and deductive processes where analysis “pervade[ed] all phases of the research enterprise” (Emerson, Fretz and Shaw, 2011, p. 173). During analysis, we verified data validity by triangulating data points to ensure that outlier experiences did not obscure our interpretation of the education phenomena.

This study finds that market-based education practices has increased competition between schools, but students have borne the brunt of these consequences through: 1) increased stratification in access to good schools; 2) a pedagogy of test preparation as schools focus on testing rather than learning; and 3) a zero-tolerance discipline system designed to either force students to conform or provide the means for their removal. We identify a mismatch between the education system’s intentions and its inequitable and variable outcomes for students. Louisiana’s educational approach is “built on the premise that all children can achieve high expectations for learning” (Louisianabelieves.com). The state envisions achieving this goal through a market-based, privatized system of autonomous charter schools granted relative freedom to design curriculum, discipline structures, personnel policies, and organizational features within their schools. However, this system of schools, divorced from a traditional school district and corresponding layers of oversight, allows for stratification on myriad levels (demographic, academic, school culture/atmosphere, etc). This reality, coupled with a stringent accountability framework, reinforces the schools’ proclivities for student exclusion and stratified sorting.

References:
Charmaz, K. (2014); Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011); http://www.louisianabelieves.com/resources/about-us.

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