This report provides an introduction to the role and responsibilities of charter boards in the New Orleans public education system. Geared towards families, it explains the difference between charter boards and the Orleans Parish School Board, provides a list of all operational charter boards in the city, and answers some common questions…

Urban South Grassroots Research Collective for Public Education (USGRC) is a New Orleans-based coalition melding research and grassroots organizing for racial-economic equity. Buras examines her involvement as a scholar activist working in solidarity with community groups to document the effects of the charter school takeover on black public…

Since 2007, the Cowen Institute has conducted annual polls on perceptions of public education in New Orleans. These polls have served to provide insight on how parents, guardians, and the general public feel about the most relevant issues related to New Orleans' highly decentralized K-12 public education system. In previous editions of the poll,…

Charter schools are publicly funded schools freed from some of the regulations placed on traditional public schools (TPS). In exchange for that greater level of autonomy, public charter schools are required to meet performance goals contained in their authorizing charter or face the prospect of closure. Most public charter schools may enroll…

In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 virus shuttered schools across the country and world and calls for racial justice expanded into nearly every sphere of social and political life as the nation reeled at another life violently taken at the hands of a police officer. School system leaders faced difficult decisions about delivering instruction…

In the wake of the tragedy and destruction that came with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, public schools in New Orleans became part of an almost unthinkable experiment--eliminating the traditional public education system and completely replacing it with charter schools and school choice. Fifteen years later, the results have been remarkable, and the…

Theories of market-based school reform suggest that teacher labor markets may be inefficient, and perhaps inequitable, because union contracts, tenure protections, and government regulation limit school autonomy over hiring, evaluation, compensation, and working conditions. In a less restrictive setting, schools could incentivize performance by…

There are approximately 1.5 million K-12 students and an additional 1.4 million children under the age of six experiencing homelessness across the United States. While many of these students attend traditional public schools, a growing number, at least 60,000, are enrolled in charter schools. Charter schools are independently-operated public…

Over the past 15 years, the education research community has advocated for rigorous research designs that support causal inferences, for research that provides more generalizable results across settings, and for the value of research-practice partnerships that inform the design of local programs and policies. We propose the multi-cohort,…

Charter schools because of their entanglements with privatization remain one of the most publicly contested and controversial educational reform initiatives. Charter schools, in theory, are to balance autonomy and accountability in order to provide students with innovative learning environments and increased achievement on traditional academic…

Teacher labor markets are evolving across the United States. The rise of charter schools, alternative teacher certification, and portfolio districts are transforming teachers' access to employment, changing the way they search for and apply for jobs, and may also change the role that social networks play in the job search. However, we know little…

In March 2020, the coronavirus shuttered schools across the United States and the world. In the first year of the pandemic, school systems faced difficult decisions about how to deliver instruction while maintaining the safety and wellbeing of students, families, faculty, and staff. As the months passed, the consequences from this public health…

Purpose: Nearly all schools in the United States closed in spring 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyze traditional public and charter school reopenings for the 2020-21 school year in five urban districts. We provide a rich and theoretically grounded description of how and why educational leaders made reopening decisions in each…

Using New Orleans as a site of analysis, this article provides a critical race theory reading of a little studied policy mechanism, the charter school application and authorization process. Embedded and competing narratives within charter school applications are analyzed. The authorization process is the central gatekeeping mechanism in the…

Using administrative and qualitative data, we investigate how decentralization affects the supply of optional educational services using the example of school-based prekindergarten (pre-K) in New Orleans during the transition to a majority-charter system. Although charter school leaders are motivated by student- and school-level benefits of pre-K,…