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159 Charter schools in new Orleans have been hailed as the silver lining from Hurricane Katrina. The state of louisiana used the hurricane as an opportunity to rebuild the entire new Orleans public school system, considered among the worst in the country, and launched the nation’s most extensive charter school experiment. These rebuilding efforts focused on charter schools not only as the primary means of expanding school choice in the public school system but also as a way of holding failing traditional public schools accountable at the district level. This chapter evaluates how this experiment has fared in providing quality education to all students of the new Orleans public school system. The new system steered a minority of students, including virtually all of the city’s white students, into a set of selective, higher-performing schools and another group, including most of the city’s students of color, into a group of lower-performing schools. segregation of students is a cause for concern. racial and economic segregation undermine the life chances and educational opportunities of low-income students and students of color. school choice does not by itself empower students of color to escape this, especially when it leads them to racially segregated, high-poverty schools. All of the major components of the city school system serve large majorities of black and poor students. The few schools with significant numbers of white students represent the only integrated schools in the system. These few sites serve essentially all of the city’s white students. to guarantee equal educational opportunities to all of the city’s students, the school system must both look inward— 8 The state of Public schools in Post-Katrina new Orleans The Challenge of Creating Equal Opportunity Baris Gumus-Dawes, Thomas luce, and Myron Orfield 160 Gumus-Dawes, Luce, and Orfield limiting the selectivity system, which favors a few schools over the majority of the system, and renewing its commitment to the city’s traditional public schools— and outward, taking a more balanced, regional approach to school choice in the form of regional magnet schools and new interdistrict programs, which do not yet exist. r ACE AnD POvErty in nEW Or lEAns MEtrOPOlitAn Ar EA sCHOOls The schools of new Orleans were overwhelmingly black and poor before Hurricane Katrina, and they remain so today. students of color represent 95 percent of the student body in city schools and 50 percent in the suburbs. nearly all of the small number of white students in city schools are concentrated in just a few schools, and nearly half of suburban schools are integrated. Three-quarters of students of color in the region attend highly segregated schools, compared to only 22 percent of white students. (segregated schools have 0–30 percent white students.) race and income are closely correlated. As a result, racial segregation concentrates students of color in very-high-poverty schools. in 2009, 65 percent of new Orleans students of color attended schools with free and reduced-price lunch eligibility rates in excess of 75 percent, compared to 19 percent of white students. Despite the massive displacement that Hurricane Katrina caused in 2005, the racial demographics of the new Orleans metropolitan area in 2009 (2008–9 school year) looked only slightly different from those of 2004 (2003–4 school year). The nonwhite share of students in the region was 65 percent in 2004 and 61 percent in 2009. Most schools in the city had shares of students of color greater than 90 percent in both years. Many suburban schools also had substantial shares of students of color, especially in areas close to new Orleans, but black students especially were concentrated in the city both before and after Katrina. City schools were more than 90 percent black in both 2004 and 2009. Hispanic and other students of color, on the other hand, were largely in suburban schools. in 2009, 43 percent of the black students in the region attended school in the city of new Orleans, compared to only 9 percent of Hispanic students and 17 percent of other students of color. student poverty rates increased between 2004 and 2009 in both the city and the suburbs—from 75 to 85 percent in the city and from 58 to 62 percent in the suburbs. Although poverty rates are clearly higher in the city, poverty was prevalent across the region. Poor students in suburban school districts actually outnumbered those in city schools in both years. in 2009, 69 percent of the...

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