Only in New Orleans

With 2015 marking the 10th commemoration of Hurricane Katrina, education reform in New Orleans continues to garner substantial local, national, and international attention. Advocates and critics alike have continued to cite test scores, new school providers, and different theories of governance in making multiple arguments for and against how contemporary education policy is shaping public education and its role in the rebuilding of the city. Rather than trying to provide a single, unified account of education reform in New Orleans, the chapters in this volume provide multiple ways of approaching some of the most significant questions around school choice and educational equity that have arisen in the years since Katrina. This collection of research articles, essays, and journalistic accounts of education reform in New Orleans collectively argues that the extreme makeover of the city’s public schools toward a new market-based model was shaped by many local, historically specific conditions. In consequence, while the city’s schools have been both heralded as a model for other cities and derided as a lesson in the limits of market-based reform, the experience of education reform that has taken place in the city – and its impacts on the lives of students, families, and educators – could have happened only in New Orleans.