The Coup D’état of the New Orleans Public Schools: Money, Power, and the Illegal Takeover of a Public School System

322 Pages·2018·18.797 MB·English

by  Raynard Sanders

14
The Coup D’état of the New Orleans Public Schools explores
and criticizes the contemporary educational reforms of the
New Orleans public school system. The New Orleans education
reforms implemented after Hurricane Katrina, using the
corporate model approach, have been an academic failure with
T
charter operators making millions of dollars while reestablishing
H
a segregated school system based on race and class—all in the E

C
name of school reform. Despite the claims of unprecedented
O
academic success the educational reforms have been a dismal U
P
failure academically and operationally, and have resurrected
D
equity and access issues. Equally as disturbing the reforms E´,
T
firmly have re-established a tiered public school system that A
T
segregates students by race and class. The Coup D’état of the

O
New Orleans Public Schools puts the corporate education R F

reform movement in its proper context, which is to create A T
Y H
a new twenty-first century model for turning around urban N E
A N
public school districts in the United States. This book reveals R
E
D
what really happened pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina that W

S
contributed to the state takeover of public schools in New A O
N R
Orleans. This story is told through the eyes of parents, students,
D L
activists, political leaders, and Orleans Parish School Board E E
R A
members and employees who have been largely ignored. It S N
S
also includes an analysis of the author’s personal experience of

P
almost forty years in New Orleans public schools as a teacher, U
B
principal, and college professor.
L
I
C

S
RAYNARD SANDERS C
has over forty years‘ H
O
Cover design: experience in education O
Noël Anderson in numerous capacities. L
S
Cover photo: Most recently he co-

©Pheobe Ferguson 2015 authored Twenty-First-
Century Jim Crow
Schools: The Impact
P
E
of Charters on Public T
E
R
Education. Dr. Sanders
L
A
received his Bachelor of Arts from Dillard University, his Masters N
G
of Educational Administration from Southern University, and
his Doctorate of Education from Teachers College, Columbia
www.peterlang.com University.
14
The Coup D’état of the New Orleans Public Schools explores
and criticizes the contemporary educational reforms of the
New Orleans public school system. The New Orleans education
reforms implemented after Hurricane Katrina, using the
corporate model approach, have been an academic failure with
T
charter operators making millions of dollars while reestablishing
H
a segregated school system based on race and class—all in the E

C
name of school reform. Despite the claims of unprecedented
O
academic success the educational reforms have been a dismal U
P
failure academically and operationally, and have resurrected
D
equity and access issues. Equally as disturbing the reforms E´,
T
firmly have re-established a tiered public school system that A
T
segregates students by race and class. The Coup D’état of the

O
New Orleans Public Schools puts the corporate education R F

reform movement in its proper context, which is to create A T
Y H
a new twenty-first century model for turning around urban N E
A N
public school districts in the United States. This book reveals R
E
D
what really happened pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina that W

S
contributed to the state takeover of public schools in New A O
N R
Orleans. This story is told through the eyes of parents, students,
D L
activists, political leaders, and Orleans Parish School Board E E
R A
members and employees who have been largely ignored. It S N
S
also includes an analysis of the author’s personal experience of

P
almost forty years in New Orleans public schools as a teacher, U
B
principal, and college professor.
L
I
C

S
RAYNARD SANDERS C
has over forty years‘ H
O
Cover design: experience in education O
Noël Anderson in numerous capacities. L
S
Cover photo: Most recently he co-

©Pheobe Ferguson 2015 authored Twenty-First-
Century Jim Crow
Schools: The Impact
P
E
of Charters on Public T
E
R
Education. Dr. Sanders
L
A
received his Bachelor of Arts from Dillard University, his Masters N
G
of Educational Administration from Southern University, and
his Doctorate of Education from Teachers College, Columbia
www.peterlang.com University.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
The Coup D’état of the New Orleans
Public Schools

“Raynard Sanders provides a vivid account of how the educational ‘Miracle in New Orleans’
following Hurricane Katrina has created an educational marketplace that offers ‘choice’ to the
most advantaged students and a revolving door of failing schools to the least advantaged, while
re-segregating the city even more starkly than before. Sanders meticulously outlines the equity
and access issues that have emerged in a marketplace that provides only the illusion of school
choice to many families who have witnessed the destruction of neighborhood schools that were
once the hub of their communities. The Coup D’état of the New Orleans Public Schools is critically
important reading for those who care about the future of public education and the fight for
equal rights in American society.”
—Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor Emeritus,
Stanford University and President, Learning Policy Institute

“The struggle over the fate and future of public education has played out with notable intensity
in New Orleans, Louisiana, never more significantly than in recent years as NOLA has
become—post-Hurricane Katrina—the laboratory for a thoroughgoing corporate takeover of
public education. In this compelling account the educator/activist/scholar Raynard Sanders
documents the treacherous alliance that formed between old-school white supremacists and
modern-day corporate raiders eager to get their grasping hands on what they perversely perceive
as the ‘public education market.’ The Coup D’état of the New Orleans Public Schools illustrates the
case in compelling detail, and shows us precisely what’s at stake: education as a basic human
right versus schooling as a product for sale in the marketplace; democracy as a vital force for
human development or the veritable erasure of the public; a step forward in the abiding and
courageous press of Black parents for a full and decent education for their children as a pathway
to authentic equality versus a further continuance of the shameful American tradition of
apartheid schooling. This is a necessary book.”
—William Ayers, Author of several books on education including
Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World, To Teach, and Teaching Toward Freedom

“Raynard Sanders follows the trail of money to show how a group of white community-and-
political leaders snatched control of the public schools from the citizens of New Orleans. They
turned the schools over to profit-driven ‘reformers’ who made it nearly impossible for parents
to participate in any meaningful way in their children’s schools, and they discarded a largely
African American work force—eerily reminiscent of what happened in New Orleans following
Reconstruction. Sanders peers behind the curtain of the ‘New Orleans Miracle,’ and what he
shows us is not pretty.”
—Al Kennedy, Historian and Author of Chord Changes on the Chalkboard:
How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and the Music of New Orleans
“Illegal. Fraudulent. Criminal. Unconstitutional. These words merely understate the
dehumanizing abuses the families, children and educators in New Orleans are continuing to
fight back against. When I lived there and worked at the University of New Orleans, in close
partnership with the public schools, I was inspired by the rich cultural heritage preserved and
passed on in neighborhood institutions, including the city schools. What has been done to the
schools and neighborhoods in this city is nothing short of war—not only against the Black
community but also against freedom and democracy. It is my fervent hope that in the tradition
of David Walker’s 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, Raynard Sanders’s
meticulously researched and courageous eye-witness testimony, The Coup D’état of the New
Orleans Public Schools, will also serve as a radicalizing wake-up call to those of us who cherish
liberation and believe in defending human freedom. Let us all say with the people of New
Orleans: ‘We won’t bow down. We don’t know how.’”
—Joyce E. King, Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair for Urban Teaching,
Learning and Leadership, Georgia State University
The Coup D’état
of the New Orleans
Public Schools
Narrative, Dialogue,
and the Political
Production of Meaning
Michael Peters & Peter McLaren
Series Editors
Vol. 14

The Education and Struggle series is part of the Peter Lang Education list.
Every volume is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG
New York  Bern  Berlin
Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw
Raynard Sanders

The Coup D’état
of the New Orleans
Public Schools

Money, Power, and the Illegal
Takeover of a Public School System

PETER LANG
New York  Bern  Berlin
Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sanders, Raynard, author.
Title: The coup d’état of the New Orleans public schools: money, power,
and the illegal takeover of a public school system / Raynard Sanders.
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2018.
Series: Education and struggle; vol. 14
ISSN 2168-6432 (print) | ISSN 2168-6459 (online)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017030373 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3744-0 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4331-3745-7 (ebook pdf)
ISBN 978-1-4331-3746-4 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-3747-1 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Public schools—Louisiana—New Orleans. | Educational
change—Louisiana—New Orleans. | Education and state—Louisiana—New
Orleans. | Business and education—Louisiana—New Orleans. | Privatization
in education—Louisiana—New Orleans. | Urban schools—Louisiana—New
Orleans. | Charter schools—Louisiana—New Orleans. | Racism in
education—Louisiana—New Orleans. | Segregation in
education—Louisiana—New Orleans.
Classification: LCC LA297.N4 S26 | DDC 371.010976335—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030373
DOI 10.3726/978-1-4331-3745-7

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

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All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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This book is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of New Orleans’ public school
students and parents who endured unimaginable suffering after being besieged by
the for-profit school reform movement post-Hurricane Katrina. It is also dedi-
cated to the more than 7,500 school employees that were fired after Hurricane
Katrina, which devastated the local economy and destroyed the city’s black middle
class. Their firing destroyed their families and caused immeasurable harm to the
children of New Orleans.