The Color of Reform

Abstract

Input is not what we need. What we need is the power to make decisions . . . We need a plan coming from us . . . We don't need a 35-year-old New York educator to come in and tell us what we need to do. We need to tell them [entrepreneurs] what to do! -Endesha Juakali (alumnus of John McDonogh High School) AbstractThis article will focus on both the racial implications of the charter school "movement" in New Orleans after Katrina and the resistance to it by local citizens. We argue that it is difficult to ignore the manner in which White supremacist ideology has been normalized in the reform as it has historically in U.S. public education. Drawing on separate but complementary research by the authors, this article will be multi-vocal and reflect our positionalities as researchers who are "insiders."

No Excuses or No Equity?: Narrative and Counternarrative Themes within Educational Discourse in New Orleans

“…Such narratives position themselves as resisting or "speaking back" to pro-charter narratives that characterize the new system as an unequivocal success. 38 …”

“…40 Counternarratives argue the hurricane, far from providing a golden opportunity for reform, scattered the city's Black parents, students, and teachers across the country, leaving their collective voices unheard in a hasty takeover enabled by a majority-White state legislature that had always been hostile to the autonomy of New Orleans public schools. 41 This also enabled a widespread power grab of schools from an assortment of well-funded, primarily Whiterun charter management organizations from outside New Orleans, further dispossessing the Black community of its right to educate its own children. Rather than positioning the takeover as a "blank slate" and linking it to more recent market-based reform narratives, counternarratives attempt to interject a sense of historicism and link it to previous dispossessions of African American schools, neighborhoods, and communities by racially and financially elite interests.…”

I Can’t Be Racist—I Teach in an Urban School, and I’m a Nice White Lady!

“…the displacement and replacement of Black veteran teachers and educators for the transplanted, mostly young and White 'northerners' who seized control of public schools at a time of incredible collective emotional and infrastructural trauma" (Dixson et al, 2015, p. 289). The African American community of New Orleans perceived this take-over of public education as based on white supremacist beliefs that African Americans are incapable of teaching their own, thus needing a white savior to lift them out of ignorance and poverty (Dixson et al, 2015).…”

“…In response, white educators often fall victim to "white saviority" where, as Matias (2013) explains, "white teachers believe they are loving their students of color when, in fact, they may be fulfilling their own narcissistic need to save them" (p. 72). Through a compulsion to serve in low-income, urban schools or through programs such as Teach for America (TFA) (Cann, 2015), this savior complex can further alienate them from their students and the community in which they teach (Dixson, Buras & Jeffers, 2015;Matias, 2013;Matias & Liou, 2015).…”

“…Dixson, Buras and Jeffers (2015) took an in-depth look at the impact of a CMO take-over in post-Katrina New Orleans. While portrayed as an overhaul of a failing system, the African American community described the process as an assault when 7,500 mostly African American paraprofessionals, teachers, and administrators of the Orleans Parish School District were fired and replaced by predominately young, white transplants from organizations like Teach for America (TFA), New Leaders for New Schools, and the New Teacher Project (Dixson et al, 2015). Community members described those who replaced veteran African American educators as "carpet baggers .…”