Description
Two months after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana took control of nearly all the public schools in New Orleans. Today, all of the city's public schools are charter schools. Although many analyses mark the beginning of education reform in New Orleans with Katrina, in Public Schools, Private Governance, J. Celeste Layargues that the storm merely accelerated the timeline for reforms that had inched along incrementally over the previous decade. Both before and after Katrina, white reformers purposely excluded Black educators, community members, and parents.
Public Schools, Private Governance traces the slow, deliberate dismantling of New Orleans' public schools, and the processes that have maintained the reforms made in Katrina's immediate aftermath, showing how Black parents and residents were left without a voice and the officials charged with school governance, most of whom are white, with little accountability. Lay cogently explains how political minorities disrupted systems to create change and keep reforms in place, and the predictable political effects-exclusion, frustration, and resignation-on the part of those most directly affected.
Author: J. Celeste Lay
Publisher: Temple University Press
Published: 05/20/2022
Pages: 249
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d
ISBN13: 9781439922644
ISBN10: 1439922640
BISAC Categories:
- Education | Schools | Types | Charter
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies
- Education | History
About the Author
J. Celeste Lay is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane University and the author of A Midwestern Mosaic: Immigration and Political Socialization in Rural America.