Despite the myriad of challenges that families, students, teachers and policymakers faced in 2021, the momentum to transform education did not waver. New opportunities for students unfolded in more than a dozen states through expanded private and public school choice. An additional 1.7 million students gained eligibility for private choice alone,…

School choice reforms are increasingly common across the U.S. This symposium summarizes and presents the most recent research on the social effects of private school choice programs and public charter schools. All three papers consider heterogeneity in effects that can and should inform policymaking. The first paper, "Charter School Entry and…

With more than six thousand charter schools in the United States, charter school outcomes are a growing field of study within the broad discipline of education and specifically within school social work. However, there is little research to document the demographic and clinical characteristics of social workers in charter schools. The current…

Drawing on ethnographic data, this article critically analyzes pedagogy in "no excuses" charter schools in New Orleans. Employing Ladson-Billings's framework for culturally relevant pedagogy, the author describes the level of academic rigor, cultural competence, and critical consciousness development across classrooms. This study…

The mishandling of pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina rescue and recovery is stunningly similar to the mishandling by those who have been in charge of Louisiana public education over the past seven years. This includes the devaluing of the teaching profession, the rise of the marketization of education, and the minimizing of the common good. In this…

Charter schools have become the hegemonic "solution" for urban educational reform initiatives aimed at curtailing longstanding race-based educational inequities. The "common sense" of neoliberal charter schools as the cure to persistent inequality is best illustrated in the post-Katrina New Orleans educational reforms. This…

Amid the growth of charter schools, autonomous schools, and private management organizations, an increasing number of urban districts are moving toward a portfolio management model (PMM). In a PMM, the district central office oversees schools that operate under a variety of governance models. The expansion of PMMs raises questions about local…

This commentary suggests that a countermovement for educational and social justice must learn from the dominant global neo-liberal movement and its successes in creating institutions and knowledge-making processes and networks. Local struggles for educational justice are important, but they need to be linked to a broader educational justice…

Since 2005, New Orleans has proved fertile ground for the most extensive education reform movement in the United States. As such, the educational landscape in New Orleans is a highly contested space. Yet stakeholders across the pro/anti-charter divide lack a fully developed language that accommodates the multi-vocality of participants contributing…

Under new school-choice policies, schools feel increasing pressure to market their schools to parents and students. I examine how school leaders in New Orleans used different marketing strategies based on their positions in the market hierarchy and the ways in which they used formal and informal processes to recruit students. This study relied on…

In "Redefining the School District in America," Nelson Smith reexamines existing recovery school districts (RSDs)--entities in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Michigan charged with running and turning around their state's worst schools--and assembles the most comprehensive catalog of similar initiatives underway and under consideration…

Changes in the education system following Hurricane Katrina have received considerable attention from scholars in recent years. However, the role of Catholic schools is often overlooked in such discussions of school reform, which most often concentrate on the dramatic changes in the public school sector. This oversight is significant given that…

This article critically analyzes the application of charter school techniques in teacher education, especially in two noteworthy programs: the newly developed Relay Graduate School of Education and Match Teacher Residency. We describe how their approaches to teacher preparation differ from traditional teacher education programs. We also raise…

This article develops a framework for investigating research use, using an "advocacy coalition framework" and the concepts of a "supply side" (mainly organizations) and "demand side" (policymakers). Drawing on interview data and documents from New Orleans about the charter school reforms that have developed there…

As the city with the largest charter-school market share in the United States, New Orleans, Louisiana exemplifies market-oriented models in education. For a city that is so "drenched in the past," the reform movement in New Orleans typically neglects historical context, often dismissing the education system pre-Katrina as simply corrupt…