"Bantu Education": Erasure of Traditions, History, and Culture Through the Closure of Historically Black High Schools

• In Event: Division L Vice-Presidential Session. School Choice, Race, and Community Engagement in Evaluating Education Reform: The Case of New Orleans

Abstract

Focusing on historically Black high schools in New Orleans, this paper takes a deeper look into school closures authorized by No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act. Consistent with existing literature on all-Black schools, data indicate how these schools were integral to their communities. Data further illustrate how autonomous charter management organizations and the schools that they operate have frequently separated and alienated children from their families, neighborhoods, traditions, and histories. In utilizing a collaborative methodology as well as fieldnotes and memos from years of preliminary and on-going observations, interviews with 30 participants, audio-visual materials, and archival documents, this paper provides policymakers, researchers, and practitioners with nuanced ways of understanding the implications of racialized neoliberal reforms.

Author

• Elizabeth K. Jeffers, University of New Orleans