Departing from mainstream accounts of the post-Katrina New Orleans state takeover and the more recent "unification" of schools under local governance, this case study utilizes the plantation (Hartman, 1997; Woods, 1998, McKittrick, 2011) as a theoretical device and the silenced archive (Trouillot, 2015) as a method of inquiry to better…

The COVID-19 crisis caused the educational system's sudden and drastic upheaval as parents were forced to decide where their children would attend school and how they would get there. These decisions were complicated by the uncertainty surrounding what type of online or hybrid schooling districts would offer, the health risks of different…

Growing numbers of students are educated in charter schools, including students with disabilities (SWD). Prior research suggests that charter schools educate a smaller percentage of SWD than traditional public schools, leading to a special education gap between sectors. We used data from a large urban district to examine how choice, mobility, and…

In education, low-income and racially minoritized students in urban districts are often constructed as 'dependent' -- weak in their social positions but deserving of educational opportunity. This social construction of 'urban' students has been central to school choice politics and policymaking in the United States. In this study, I interrogate…

In recent years, some U.S. school districts have shifted away from direct management of schools, toward systems in which some or all schools operate under enhanced autonomy, accountability, and parental choice. Yet dynamics driving these changes are understudied, and there are few comparative studies of system-level governance shifts. To address…

To date, there is a paucity of research that examines differences between charter schools that operate in suburban and nonsuburban contexts. This article examines whether students in suburban charter schools perform better or worse than their counterparts in traditional public schools or students in urban charter schools. Boasting the largest and…

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…

Historically, debates about educational choice have wrestled with big, unresolved tensions that lie at the heart of American life, having to do with individual rights, community obligations, public and private interests, religious freedoms, and more. But in recent years, school reformers have tended to talk about choice as though it referred only…

While prior research has examined teachers in rural schools and teachers in charter schools, there has been little research into the intersection of rural and charter schools. Using nationally representative data, we examine the extent to which teacher characteristics, school characteristics, and teacher mobility vary based on the urbanicity of…

Eight years ago, in 2014, the Civil Rights Project issued a report that raised awareness about the dire state of segregation in New York State and, in particular, New York City schools. That report spurred substantial activism, primarily led by student groups, parents, teachers, and administrators, which has been influential in the current…

Recent headlines describing the national drop in public school enrollment suggest that this is a shocking crisis brought on or worsened by the pandemic. However, Abbie Cohen argues that the current enrollment decline should not be a surprise. The underlying causes have festered for decades. Among these causes is the tension between the different…

The privatization of public funds for education through school choice programs has fueled the expansion of virtual online charter schools. This redirection of funds contributes to the idea that virtual school success is comparable or even superior to the performance of traditional public schools. The schools most adversely affected are the schools…

Few evaluations have focused on the supply and demand within the education marketplace in a school choice environment. Because traditional public schools are not subject to the same level of competitive pressures as private schools, we expect that measures of school quality--enrollment, academic achievement, and safety--will be more likely to…

This article examines charter school reform in the midst of gentrifying urban spaces and documents, through extant research and the findings from our research, the role of school choice in perpetuating school segregation in racially diverse neighborhoods. We argue that 65 years after "Brown v. Board of Education," the more the specific…

This study seeks to identify changes in neighborhood and school segregation during the age of rapidly expanding school choice. Prior to 1991, public-school choice was limited. While magnet schools existed and a number of interdistrict transfer programs were in place, few public-school students left their neighborhoods to receive an education.…