"Lifetime Stakeholders": Community Groups and the Negotiation of New Orleans' Charter School Identites (Poster 16)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

This paper investigates how Black community actors utilized a policy window created by district-wide school renamings initiative to contest the outcomes of New Orleans’ post-Katrina all-charter system. It is grounded in field theory which gives a framework for understanding how the unprecedented level of privatization and charterization affects different actors engage politically in this fledgling all-charter system. By examining three cases of renaming where Black actors reclaim a lost school identity, maintain an existing school identity, and assert a new school identity, I demonstrate how New Orleans’ charter schools are politically and cuturally tied to former pre-Katrina public school system through continued patterns of racism and resistance.

Author

• Amanda Lu, Stanford University