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The Coup D'état of the New Orleans Public Schools explores and criticizes the contemporary educational reforms of the New Orleans public school system. The New Orleans education reforms implemented after Hurricane Katrina, using the corporate model approach, have been an academic failure with charter operators making millions of dollars while reestablishing a segregated school system based on race and class-all in the name of school reform. Despite the claims of unprecedented academic success the educational reforms have been a dismal failure academically and operationally, and have resurrected equity and access issues. Equally as disturbing the reforms firmly have re-established a tiered public school system that segregates students by race and class. The Coup D'état of the New Orleans Public Schools puts the corporate education reform movement in its proper context, which is to create a new twenty-first century model for turning around urban public school districts in the United States. This book reveals what really happened pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina that contributed to the state takeover of public schools in New Orleans. This story is told through the eyes of parents, students, activists, political leaders, and Orleans Parish School Board members and employees who have been largely ignored. It also includes an analysis of the author's personal experience of almost forty years in New Orleans public schools as a teacher, principal, and college professor.
List of contents
Foreword - Acknowledgments - The Coup D'état - Privatizing Public Education: New Orleans the Perfect Place - Intended and Unintended Consequences: The Assault - School Communities Disenfranchised and Destroyed - The New Orleans Public School Gold Rush - Old Lessons Learned in New Orleans - Glossary - Appendix A: Picard Letter to the Department of Education - Appendix B: Act No. 35 - Appendix C: Charter School Grant Program Amounts Allocated to Charter Schools - Appendix D: Louisiana's 7th Grade Cohort Graduation Rate - Appendix E: Reasons for Judgement, Eddy Oliver versus Orleans Parish School Board - Appendix F: Carver Civil Rights Complaint - Appendix G: Civil Rights Complaint on School - Appendix H: Data Sharing Agreement - Appendix I: Act No. 91 - Index.
About the author
Raynard Sanders has over forty years' experience in education in numerous capacities. Most recently he co-authored Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools: The Impact of Charters on Public Education. Dr. Sanders received his Bachelor of Arts from Dillard University, his Masters of Educational Administration from Southern University, and his Doctorate of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Summary
The Coup D'état of the New Orleans Public School District explores and criticizes the contemporary educational reforms of the New Orleans public school system.
Report
"The struggle over the fate and future of public education has played out with notable intensity in New Orleans, Louisiana, never more significantly than in recent years as NOLA has become-post-Hurricane Katrina-the laboratory for a thoroughgoing corporate takeover of public education. In this compelling account the educator/activist/scholar Raynard Sanders documents the treacherous alliance that formed between old-school white supremacists and modern-day corporate raiders eager to get their grasping hands on what they perversely perceive as the 'public education market.' The Coup D'état of the New Orleans Public Schools illustrates the case in compelling detail, and shows us precisely what's at stake: education as a basic human right versus schooling as a product for sale in the marketplace; democracy as a vital force for human development or the veritable erasure of the public; a step forward in the abiding and courageous press of Black parents for a full and decent education for their children as a pathway to authentic equality versus a further continuance of the shameful American tradition of apartheid schooling. This is a necessary book."-William Ayers, Author of several books on education including Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World, To Teach, and Teaching Toward Freedom
