New Orleans: The Challenges of Equity and Scale

Article PDF | |

Going to Scale with Smart Systems: VUE Number 28, Summer 2010

As New Orleans continues to rebuild its public education system and city infrastructure five years after Hurricane Katrina, local and national education stakeholders reflect on what it takes to align school systems and out-of-school services to provide high-quality learning for all a city’s students.

Over the past five years, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform has brought together practitioners, researchers, community leaders, and funders to consider the most pressing issues in urban education reform and to collectively build the knowledge and partnerships necessary to address them. The Institute has broadened and refined its ideas over time to reflect the view that schools and school systems alone cannot ensure that all students have the resources and supports they need, but that in partnership with community agencies and organizations, a comprehensive web of learning supports is possible. We call this type of partnership a “smart education system.”

New Orleans is an ideal place to think about the development of a smart education system. Because New Orleans is rebuilding its entire city infrastructure, it makes sense to consider the school system in the context of economic development, housing, transportation, health care, and social services. How this city addresses the need to build and align a new portfolio of schools and new city infrastructures can shed important light on the challenges and opportunities faced by urban systems across the country.

To facilitate cross-sector reflections on these issues, the Institute held its sixth Emerging Knowledge Forum in New Orleans last year. The three-day meeting brought together New Orleans educators, parents, and community leaders to engage in discussions that surfaced diverse points of view and identified some of the challenges and opportunities for the city going forward. The perspectives and ideas that were voiced by local participants were augmented by the participation of other communities and national organizations. These included three sites – Boston, Chicago, and the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice – that are doing promising work in four key areas critical to rebuilding education in New Orleans and, we believe, central to the development of a smart education system: human capital development, cross-sector partnerships, community organizing and engagement, and the effective use of data.

Through small and large-group sessions, forum participants grappled with the challenges of building smart education systems and addressed a set of crosscutting issues faced by these efforts. The Forum facilitated learning and critical reflection for participants from diverse backgrounds and perspectives and contributed to the groundwork laid by the Institute for a case study that was conducted from December 2008 through July 2009. Capturing a snapshot in time of the rebuilding of public education in New Orleans, we conducted forty interviews and eight focus groups with major 
local stakeholders, including parents, students, teachers, principals, union leaders, reform-support leaders, community leaders, state education officials, and district personnel from the Recovery School District and Orleans Parish School Board. This article draws on part of that research, along with our documentation of the views of New Orleanians who participated in the Forum.¹

There are many complexities in the New Orleans context – the decentralized governance structure, for instance – that are beyond the scope of this article to exhaustively document and analyze. Rather, the article aims to give voice to some of the perspectives that have been expressed to us through this process, especially those that are often missing in public discussions of education reform. We give special attention to one issue that was raised frequently in discussions and interviews: To what extent does the system of “choice” in New Orleans offer real options to students and their families? The answers to that question offered by participants we spoke with revealed some sharp disagreements among 
different stakeholder groups.

Public Education in 
New Orleans before and 
after Katrina

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, approximately 65,000 students were enrolled in the 115 schools that made up the Orleans Parish public school district, which ranked sixty-seventh out of the sixty-eight parishes in the state of Louisiana in terms of student achievement. The student population was 
predominately Black, with less than 5 percent of school-aged White children attending the public schools (Cowen Institute 2008). However, compared with their total enrollment in the district, White students benefited disproportionately from the high-performing educational options offered in selective-admissions schools.² Pre-Katrina, 75 percent of the students enrolled in the district were eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, indicating a high concentration of high-poverty students. Overall, academic proficiency rates were low and internal dysfunction was high at the district and in many schools. Plagued by public criticism for its chronic fiscal mismanagement, low student achievement, and deteriorated stock of school facilities, the Orleans Parish school district churned through eight superintendents between 1998 and 2005, which further undermined its capacity to make drastic and needed improvements.

In the eyes of some stakeholders, Hurricane Katrina presented New Orleans with an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and re-imagine what public education could look like. But we heard that for many other residents, the chance to write a new chapter in the history of public education was minimized by the extent to which Katrina’s devastation impacted their personal lives and was further limited by the process in which the plans for transformation of public education were developed and concretized quickly.

Virtually everyone in New Orleans experienced some degree of loss and trauma, but not everyone with a vested interest and stake in the future of New Orleans public schools appeared to have the same chance to put their stamp on what became the blueprint for change. The absence of a strong voice from residents who depend on public schools the most, but were unable to make a speedy return to their homes and neighborhoods, left some stakeholders feeling disenfranchised in the decision-making process. Hence, trust was further eroded in a climate where there was already heightened uncertainty.

A Drastic Overhaul of Governance

Following the storm, the Louisiana State Legislature moved quickly and approved Act 35, which permitted the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) to take control of Orleans Parish schools deemed “failing schools” and operate them under the authority of the Louisiana Recovery School District (RSD). Pursuant to Act 35, BESE voted to take over more than 100 schools, some of which it reopened; others remain closed or were converted to charter schools. In the wake of the storm, 35 percent of school buildings were damaged. The Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB; also known as New Orleans Public Schools) was left with five schools and twelve charter schools under its control. BESE continued its control over two charter schools that operate in Orleans Parish.

With a complex structure emerging that included multiple systems of district-run and charter-run schools operating under one local jurisdiction, issues of coherence, governance, equity, and accountability have become key challenges and concerns. For many people we interviewed, it seemed unclear where ultimate authority rested for ensuring the success of every student in New Orleans across all systems, networks, and school types. The roles of OPSB and the superintendent have been diminished in the new education environment, with one important exception – OPSB was and still is the only local entity in New Orleans with the authority to levy taxes for public education, and OPSB controls the total municipal budget for operating schools. Funding for all schools, RSD and charters included, flows through OPSB.

RSD and OPSB operate through central office departments that function much like any other district. Charter schools, of which New Orleans has a higher proportion than any other city in the country, operate as stand-alone schools or in small networks of schools. These schools are authorized by RSD, OPSB, or BESE and have their own governing board and autonomy over teaching and learning, the school budget, the provision of school services and resources, and – most important – staffing.

“A Decentralized System of 
School Choice”

Most of the people we interviewed commonly referred to the vision for public education in New Orleans as a “decentralized system of school choice” where parents have the option to apply to any open-enrollment school in the city. Choice as it is commonly understood in education reform is a strategy designed to open opportunities for parents to select a school for their child that matches the child’s interests and needs. In New Orleans, charter schools have become the primary vehicle for exercising choice.

Many local community and parent leaders we spoke to challenged the assumption that the “decentralized system of choice” is actually designed to give all students fair options to attend a high-performing, quality school. When social, political, economic, and cultural capital have been the gatekeepers that allowed some students to attend good public schools and left others in poorly performing neighborhood schools, a critical question arises: Will families with the least amount of capital get access to the “best” schools that New Orleans has to offer? If so, who will keep both equity and excellence at the forefront so that there aren’t just pockets of high-quality options, but quality choices for students and families at scale, in neighborhoods throughout the city?

For most low-income and working class parents, choices about their child’s schooling go hand-in-hand with a whole host of other decisions that must be made – decisions that involve transportation, after-school care, employment, housing, and other fundamental needs. And in New Orleans, those decisions are still compounded by the sudden collapse of the city’s infrastructure and the rebuilding process that has taken place following Hurricane Katrina.

In our interviews with parents who have navigated through the decentralized system of choice, the majority of them expressed the view that real choice was an illusion, given the many difficulties they experienced in finding good choices and the multiple factors they considered before making good school choices. Consistent with the research done by Teske, Fitzpatrick, and O’Brien (2009) that cited transportation as a major barrier to school choice for low-income parents, we found that some parents in New Orleans were not able to take advantage of the full range of options that school choice created, but instead had chosen schools based on proximity to home or place of employment, even if another school farther away might have been a better match for their child. We also found that among parents for whom transportation was not a major issue, it was still frustrating for many of them to find a good fit and several had changed schools at least once during the school year.

Many stakeholders we interviewed that others consider “anti-charter” contend that they are not simply for or against charter schools. They argue that what they are opposed to is the wholesale movement of the district toward every school becoming chartered as the answer to what wasn’t working in Orleans Parish schools. Many believe that charter schools can be one strategy, but it should not be the only strategy 
to improve public schools.

Post-Katrina New Orleans presented tremendous challenges to an educational system already in need of life support. Having a chance to fundamentally reinvent public education when every other major system of the city was also reinventing itself offered a window of opportunity rarely seen in other communities undertaking large-scale education reform. But to ensure that the citywide transformation of New Orleans is not a missed opportunity, but rather a real chance to work and plan across sectors that include housing, health care, transportation, economic development, recreation, and education, new rules of engagement and different types of interaction are necessary.

The Need to Examine the Effectiveness of Accountability Mechanisms

In our interviews, many parents and community-based leaders reported that among their constituencies some schools in New Orleans have been labeled as “schools of last resort” and these schools are known to be low performing and of poor quality. In a fragmented system where schools are operated by multiple districts with different governance structures and levels of autonomy for district-run and chartered schools, accountability standards have to be evenly applied to ensure that school choice really does offer high-quality options for parents across systems and schools as they move throughout a system of choice.

Our research suggested that maintaining a market-driven approach to choice in which parents are expected to select the school they want and, if dissatisfied with the program, simply “vote with their feet” is easier said than done. Parents we interviewed expressed concern that in the charter school environment in New Orleans, it isn’t always clear how to voice dissatisfaction beyond the principal and the governing board. Some of them were also reluctant to start the search for a new school.

The Impact of Class and Race

Issues of class and race figure prominently in the choice system in Orleans Parish schools. Between 2007 and 2008, the poverty rate in New Orleans climbed from 21 percent to 23 percent; children five years of age and under represent the largest group of poor residents in the city; and poor Black residents outnumber poor White residents five to one, even though they are 62 percent and 34 percent of the general population, respectively (City-Data.com, n.d.; Plyer & Liu 2009). As Howard Fuller and members of the Black Alliance for Educational Options have often said, “Choice is widespread unless you’re poor” (Harding 2007, p. 1).

As accountability pressures in New Orleans intensify, access in the choice system is critical. If choice is creating new and innovative learning environments but they are inaccessible to students with the greatest needs, then choice further disadvantages these children by creating a system that cannot respond to their needs.

The Role of External Partners

The challenge to provide students and their families with a wide range of supports leaves external partners with an important role to play in helping districts and schools expand their options. The heightened demand for mental health, cultural enrichment, recreational, and other supports across New Orleans raises the bar for what schools will have to do to tap into a range of external supports that might be needed. The families that we interviewed regularly experienced a lack of available and aligned services offered by the schools their children attend and the communities in which they live. Helping parents to make important connections to the supports that their children need, both inside and outside of school, is what makes a smart education system a “nimble” one.

Keeping Sight of the Ultimate Goal: Equity and Excellence for All Students

Equity begins with having a diverse and representative group of stakeholders at the table who are making the decisions about how equity and excellence are defined and measured. Common data sets that can be collected across systems and schools will begin to address whether there is access to high-quality schools for the children who need them the most and if the vision for education is sustainable through a decentralized system of choice.

Smart education systems cast their net wide, drawing in the voices of students, families, communities, and schools as primary sources of intelligence about the academic, social, and cultural competencies that young people need and the range of experiences that must be available for them to develop successfully in a local or global environment. As New Orleans prepares for Act 35 to expire, questions about governance, accountability, equity, and excellence are all at the center of discussions. How these questions are answered will bring new possibilities for the vision of public education and help to shape the future of New Orleans.

——————————————–
Footnotes

¹  The full findings from our work will be presented in a case study to be released in fall 2010.

²  For example, in Benjamin Franklin High School, White students were 56 percent of the total student enrollment in the school year prior to the storm (Louisiana Department of Education n.d.).

——————————————–
References

City-Data.com. n.d. “New Orleans, Louisiana Poverty Rate Data – Information about Poor and Low-Income Residents.”
> City-Data.com Web site

Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University. 2008. The State of Public Education in New Orleans: 2008 Report. New Orleans, LA: Tulane University, Cowen Institute.
> Available for download

Harding, H. 2007. The Struggle to Achieve Authentic School Choice for Poor Families: An Interview with Howard Fuller (audio interview and transcript)
> Available online at Annenberg Institute Web site

Louisiana Department of Education. n.d. “Planning, Analysis, and Information Resources. Students – Public School – Multiple Statistics, Student Data as of October 1, 2004, Zipped Excel: Multi-Stats – October 2004 – By Site – Elementary/Secondary.”
> Available online