Reforming the city: Neoliberal school reform and democratic contestation in New Orleans

The Canadian Geographer Le Géographe canadien The Canadian Geographer Le Géographe canadien

Reforming the city: Neoliberal school reform anddemocratic contestation in New Orleans

Alice HuffDepartment of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles

Following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans became a testing ground for a series of neoliberal school reforms,including the eradication of neighbourhood attendance boundaries and the extensive charterization of publicschools in the parish. Ostensibly designed to improve schooling options, these efforts are not directed solely atsecuring positive educational outcomes. Instead, neoliberal school reforms utilize spatial strategies to reshapethe city itself in ways that often benefit white elites while displacing and disempowering many of the city’s poorpeople of colour. These reform strategies tend to undermine democratic life but, as illustrated by the work ofthe non-profit group OPEN (Orleans Public Education Network), they do not foreclose the possibility of it. Ratherthan taking a particular stand toward the current reforms, OPEN attempts to build civic capacity aroundeducational issues. The deliberative process they use creates a time and a place for a type of educativeexperience that is actively discouraged by neoliberal reform and yet vitally important to democratic struggles.

Keywords: neoliberal school reform, New Orleans, critical geographies of education, charter schools, democracy

Reformer la ville : La reforme scolaire neoliberale et la contestation democratique a laNouvelle-Orleans

Au lendemain de l’ouragan Katrina, la Nouvelle-Orleans a servi de terrain d’essai a une serie de reformesscolaires neoliberales, y compris l’elimination des frontieres d’inscription par quartier et la creation d’un vastenombre d’ecoles publiques a charte dans la paroisse. Manifestement concues pour ameliorer les options descolarisation, ces mesures ne visent pas uniquement a favoriser l’obtention de resultats scolaires positifs. Lesreformes scolaires neoliberales renvoient plutot a des strategies spatiales de reamenagement urbain quiprofitent souvent aux elites blanches aux depens des minorites visibles et marginalisees qui, dans bien des cas,sont evincees et deviennent encore plus demunies. Bien que ces strategies de reforme contribuent a appauvrir lavie democratique, des travaux comme ceux realises par l’organisme a but non lucratif OPEN (Orleans PublicEducation Network) montrent au contraire qu’elles n’en excluent pas la possibilite. Au lieu de se borner adefendre une position en ce qui concerne les reformes en cours, OPEN met l’accent sur le renforcement de lacapacite d’agir des citoyens sur les questions relatives a l’education. Le processus deliberatif sur lequel on sebase permet de situer une experience pedagogique dans un moment et un lieu qui vont a l’encontre de lareforme neoliberale et qui contribuent grandement aux luttes democratiques.

Mots cles : reforme scolaire neoliberale, la Nouvelle-Orleans, geographies critiques de l’education, ecoles acharte, democratie

Introduction

Since Hurricane Katrina, residents of New Or-leans have been thrust into one of the most

Correspondence to/Adresse de correspondance: Alice Huff, De-partment of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles,1255 Bunche Hall, Box 951524, Los Angeles, CA 90095. Email/Courriel: [email protected]

speculative urban education experiments in re-cent US history. By converting all but a frac-tion of the city’s traditional public schools intocharter schools and eradicating geographic at-tendance boundaries, reformers have institutedan educational market in which chartering or-ganizations compete for public funds attachedto enrolment numbers and school service con-tracts, while remaining exempt from collective

The Canadian Geographer / Le Geographe canadien 2013, 57(3): 311–317

DOI: 10.1111/cag.12018C© Canadian Association of Geographers / L’Association canadienne des geographes

312 Alice Huff

bargaining agreements and regulations mandatedby the locally elected government. Without thesafety net of neighbourhood schools, parentsare forced to navigate a fractured landscape oflimited educational options, competing againstother parents in order to secure schooling op-portunities for their children.

The reforms described above support the basictenets of neoliberalism. They position educationas a commodity rather than a public good, relyon a shift from government to governance, andpromote competitive self-interest over social re-sponsibility. The focus is on removing regula-tions that hinder competition and profit making,rather than on promoting equity and collectiveinvestment.

While touted as a remedy for failing schools,these reforms are more accurately viewed asa powerful mechanism for reshaping the cityitself in ways that concentrate power in thehands of the few and obscure the democraticcrisis that they help to create. In this article, Iexamine the spatial and pedagogical dimensionsof neoliberal school reform in New Orleans. Iargue that although the current reforms presenta significant challenge to democratic learning asa means of contestation, pedagogical strategiesare nevertheless a crucial mode of resistance.The work of OPEN (Orleans Public Education Net-work [2011a]), a non-profit organization in NewOrleans dedicated to developing civic capacityaround education-based issues, is described inrelation to this kind of struggle.

Neoliberal school reform as a spatialproject

Neoliberalism is always hybridized by its inter-action with local contexts and pre-existing for-mations (Brenner and Theodore 2002). Outsideforces and elite actors weren’t the only drivers ofpost-Katrina school reforms in New Orleans, andtheir efforts have not entirely washed away chan-nels of power and public expectations shaped bythe city’s complicated political and social history.As in other cities, decades of disinvestment andneglect led many residents to embrace charter-ization (Pedroni 2007; Lipman 2011). Much ofthe impetus and funding for the rapid post-crisisroll-out of neoliberal reforms in New Orleans,

however, came from a determined group of free-market advocates who saw an opportunity togain control of previously unavailable markets,land, and governance structures in a city “soft-ened” by the crisis of Katrina (Peck 2006; Klein2007; Saltman 2007; Buras 2011).

The intervention of these advocates was swiftand sweeping. Only 14 days after the hurricanestruck, while most of New Orleans was still un-der water, the conservative Heritage Foundationdeveloped 32 policies for “Responding to Hurri-cane Katrina and High Gas Prices,” including thesuspension of prevailing wage-laws in disasterareas, the creation of a flat-tax free-enterprisezone, and the implementation of a voucher sys-tem for use in charter schools (Klein 2007, 410).As residents struggled with the destruction oftheir life-worlds, these strategists were recastingthe city as an “opportunity zone” where “newapproaches to public policy issues such as en-hanced choice in public education should be thenorm” (Meese et al. 2005, 1).

In these highly racialized scenarios, blackneighbourhoods and schools were depicted asunsalvageable, in need of being wiped clean byneoliberal reforms. Local planning commissionssuch as Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB), whichincluded prominent developers, business leaders,and venture philanthropists, formed committeesspecifically dedicated to reforming schools inways that dovetailed with their plans for rede-veloping certain (wealthier, whiter) sections ofNew Orleans, while other (poorer, blacker) neigh-bourhoods were destined to become greenspace(Puckett and Gilyard 2006). As the Wall StreetJournal reported, “The power elite of New Or-leans . . . insist the remade city won’t simply re-store the old order. New Orleans before theflood was burdened by a teeming underclass,substandard schools and a high crime rate . . . .The new city must be very different . . . with betterservices and fewer poor people” (Cooper 2005,A1).

Marketizing the public school system requireda new system of governance; the chaossurrounding the hurricane provided both ajustification and a distraction as the changeswere pushed through. First, a series of state-levelexecutive and legislative acts resulted in 114 ofthe city’s 121 public schools declared “failing”and therefore eligible for takeover by the state


Reforming the City 313

of Louisiana (Dingerson 2006; Saltman 2007).1

Over 100 schools were eventually removed fromthe elected Orleans Parish School Board’s (OPSB)control (Cowen Institute 2011) and placed underthe auspices of the state-run Recovery SchoolDistrict (RSD).2 This manoeuvre decentralizedschool governance and diminished the influenceof locally elected government. In the wakeof the state takeover, the OPSB fired all oftheir 7,500 teachers and staff members whicheffectively broke the United Teachers of NewOrleans union, destroyed a longstandingstronghold of the black middle class, andcleared the last hurdle to city-wide charterschooling (Buras 2011).

Guided by the principles of governmentality,deregulation, competition, and privatization, thecentrepiece of school reform in New Orleans isthe use of charter schools as a replacement for,rather than an alternative to, direct-run schools.In 2011–2012, 78% of New Orleans’ 42,000 pub-lic school students attended charter schools,the highest percentage in the nation.3 Charterschools are publicly funded based on attendancenumbers, but not accountable to locally electedgoverning bodies or collective bargaining agree-ments in the same ways that direct-run schoolsare. Instead, they are primarily non-unionizedand run by appointed boards on a site-to-sitebasis. Thus there is no longer a centralizedlocal governing body for New Orleans schools.4

1Act 9 (2003) allowed for state control of failing schools. Act 35(2005) lowered the takeover threshold for schools in districtsdesignated as “Academically in Crisis.”

2The RSD is not an elected board, but is instead run by astate-appointed superintendent and overseen by Louisiana’sBoard of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). BESEitself is comprised of eight elected members (one from eachof the eight state-wide districts) and three governor-appointedmembers-at-large in addition to the governor-appointed StateSuperintendent. BESE meets in Baton Rouge, 80 miles fromNew Orleans.

3Of the 88 schools in operation in 2011–2012, 22 were direct-run and 66 were charters. The number of direct-run schools isslated to be reduced by a third, however, as the RSD continuesto charter or close down its direct-run options. For moreinformation see The State of Public Education in New Orleansreport (Cowen Institute 2012).

4Prior to Hurricane Katrina, the Orleans Parish School Board(OPSB) controlled public schools in New Orleans. OPSB isa locally elected board consisting of seven members. Nowgovernance is decentralized. Schools are managed not onlyby the OPSB, but also by other entities including the RSD

In Louisiana, charter schools must meet state-mandated performance goals, but each school’sboard has autonomy regarding hiring, firing,salaries, working conditions, enrolment proce-dures, entrance requirements, class size, instruc-tion, and discipline. While most charter-holdingentities are not-for-profit, many use private ed-ucational management organizations to overseesite-based operations, only one of the manyways that private contractors profit from theprivatization of New Orleans schools. The re-sult of widespread charterization is an urbanpublic school system that is no longer a sys-tem and arguably no longer public in the sensethat the vast majority of New Orleans’ pub-lic school students attend schools run by non-elected boards that are highly influenced by asmall set of non-profit organizations and venturephilanthropists.5

The effects of neoliberal reform in NewOrleans are compounded by the coupling ofcharterization and city-wide open enrolment.Open enrolment refers to the eradication of theneighbourhood attendance boundaries that in theUnited States have historically tied schools toparticular geographic areas. In most US cities,parents may choose to send their children tocharter schools as an alternative to their neigh-bourhood school, yet attendance zones remain inplace, guaranteeing children a seat in a nearbyschool. This is no longer the case in New Or-leans, where many residents returned home afterKatrina to find that their children’s schools hadeither reopened as charter schools and weretherefore not required to admit students basedon neighbourhood residency, or were not slatedto reopen at all.

and BESE. The patchwork of school governance is made evenmore complicated by extensive charterization which placesoperational control of many New Orleans schools in the handsof private managers, even when the school in question isnominally overseen by a particular entity such as the OPSB,RSD, or BESE. While Louisiana law sets out broad guidelinesfor the selection of charter board members, the compositionof charter school boards is determined by charter applicantsthemselves.

5These include the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, theFisher Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, whichhave given a combined total of $17.5 million in support of ne-oliberal reform efforts such as charterization, the developmentof alternative school administrator preparation programs, andthe expansion of Teach for America (Saltman 2010).


314 Alice Huff

The relative scarcity of attractive schoolingoptions places the power of choice primarily inthe hands of charter operators and serves tocement class and race-based privilege (Lubienskiet al. 2009). While schools receive funding foreach student who fills a seat, from the point ofview of a charter school board with contractorsto pay and benchmarks to meet, all students arenot equally desirable. Schools compete, therefore,not just for students in general, but for thosewho cost the least to educate and are the mostlikely to perform well on the standardized teststhat determine whether or not a charter will berenewed. This creates incentives for schools toshape their student population through appli-cation procedures, mandatory parental commit-ments, enrolment caps, and discipline practices,as well as through spatial strategies such aslimiting transportation options, locating schoolsites in low-poverty vs. high-need neighbour-hoods, and deploying marketing strategies tar-geted to particular areas of the city (Henigand MacDonald 2002; Fenwick 2009; Fergusonand Royal 2009; Lubienski et al. 2009; Instituteon Race and Poverty [IRP] 2010). This cherry-picking effectively concentrates families with themost need in already over-burdened direct-runpublic schools and in neighbourhoods alreadysegregated by race and class (Lubienski 2005;IRP 2010). In addition, by allowing educationproviders to locate schools anywhere in the city,the current reforms have left large areas withoutany schools, contributing to the gentrification ofsome neighbourhoods and the abandonment ofothers (Chamlee-Wright and Storr 2009).

Without the safety net traditionally providedby neighbourhood schools, many parents areforced to vie for limited spaces in distantschools that often face challenges similar to theirdirect-run predecessors. The rhetoric of schoolchoice masks the fact that not all parents areequally capable of securing the widest range ofoptions for their children and leveraging them inequally successful ways (Ball 1993; Bartlett et al.2002). Removing attendance boundaries providesnew options for some children whose parentsare in a better position to compete, but it alsoresults in an increasingly uneven geography ofopportunity as the responsibility for providingchildren with adequate schooling shifts from thestate to individuals.

OPEN: Democratic learning ascontestation

The mechanisms that have been set in motion inNew Orleans are both familiar in their methodand devastating in their scope. And yet we livein a world that is complicated by the interplayof competing paradigms and practices, alwaysin some sense open and in the making. It isimperative for those interested in alternativeurban futures not to let the pervasiveness ofneoliberal patterns overwhelm the capacity torecognize, build, and support spaces of contesta-tion (Leitner et al 2007; Purcell 2008). Preciselybecause democracy, like neoliberalism, cannotsimply be imposed from outside but must beimagined and enacted in the contexts of dailylife, the matter of how and where people actu-ally learn democratic habits cannot be ignored(Giroux 2004; Pappas 2008). In this spirit, I an-alyze the recent activities of OPEN in order toargue for the democratic potential of pedagogicalcontestations.

OPEN has positioned itself as being neitherin support of, nor in opposition to, the cur-rent reforms. Instead, the organization attemptsto engage New Orleanians in deliberation oneducation-related issues and to amplify the out-comes of this process via public policy advocacy.Refusing to take a stand on issues before therehas been sufficient time and opportunity fordeliberation on the part of the most affectedis a difficult task in the charged atmosphere ofNew Orleans’ education debates. It is a tacticthat has allowed the organization to maintainties with a diverse group of policy makers andcommunity leaders, but it also leaves the groupvulnerable to partisan attacks and charges ofpolitical impotency.

Despite the drawbacks associated with main-taining a space for inquiry before turning to ad-vocacy, however, an important feature of OPEN’sprocess is that it brings together individual par-ticipants and organizations with radically differ-ent ideas about the purpose of education ingeneral, and about reform in New Orleans morespecifically. From its inception in 2007, OPEN’sdiscussions have included those who advocatefor, or identify with, business interests and thepublic sector; particular geographic and identity-based communities; as well as those who support



and oppose market-based reforms.6 Rather thanrequiring formal membership, OPEN’s topicalworking groups and convenings bring togetherracially, geographically, and socio-economicallydiverse collectives including members of faith-based organizations, activists, students, parents,teachers, school administrators, academics, andunion members. While members’ positionalitieshave sometimes strained the very fabric of theorganization, the group remains dedicated to thevalue of difference in the deliberative process.

Although many of their commitments continueto be irreconcilable, the founding members wereable to agree that a central task of the orga-nization should be to help build civic capacityaround public education issues. To date, thisagenda has been manifested most significantly inthe One Step Campaign that began in 2010 witha “listening project” in which over 600 commu-nity members shared ideas regarding the mostpressing educational issues facing the city. Fromthese contributions, organizers identified ninetopics of community concern,7 and developed aframework for inviting people from around thecity to form small working groups made up ofneighbours, friends, colleagues, and parishioners.These working groups attended (or watchedrecordings of) monthly panels that provided avariety of viewpoints and research on each topic.The groups deliberated on the issue and re-turned a summary of their recommendations,thoughts, and conflicts to OPEN. There werethen two city-wide convenings to deliberate morewidely and develop policy recommendations. Theresulting recommendations have become the ba-sis for new rounds of inquiry/advocacy using asimilar working-group model.

I chose OPEN as an illustrative case not be-cause the group endorses the characterization ofschool reform presented in the previous section

6OPEN was formed when several non-profit groups came to-gether to discuss the state of public education in the city.These groups included the “Committee for a Better NewOrleans, Greater New Orleans Education Foundation, UrbanLeague of Greater New Orleans, Children’s Defense Fund, andLouisiana Justice Institute” (OPEN 2011b, n.p.).

7The nine One Step topics were: “Crisis of the Black Male, EarlyChildhood Education, Educator Workforce, English as a SecondLanguage, High School Reform, Kindergarten through EighthGrade Reform, Neighborhood Schools versus Choice, School &Community Partnerships, [and] Special Education” (OPEN 2012,4).

(it does not), but because their process embodiesthe kind of democracy and the kind of learn-ing that might trouble the neoliberal ideologycurrently at work in New Orleans. In arguingfor pedagogical strategies of contestation, I pointto the connection that Dewey (1976 [1939]) de-scribes between democracy and educative expe-rience. In this view, democracy is an ongoingproject, not an achievable goal. It is definednot once and for all as a collection of politi-cal mechanisms or precepts, but is continuallyand cooperatively enacted as people inquire andexperiment with new and better ways to livetogether. Democratic pedagogy does not seek toinstruct people in a particular way of life or toreveal “truths” that would provoke advocacy fora particular position. Instead, it is the practiceof attempting to live democratically. Democraticlearning comes from dealing with the challengesthat arise as a result (Pappas 2008). The implica-tion is that our contestations must be attentiveto power relations, but about more than merelymobilizing power around a given set of ideas(Rogers and Oakes 2005). Because the ends andmeans of democracy are the same, contestationmust allow us to collectively practice recognizingproblematic situations in our everyday lives anduse the means at hand to transform and enrichexperience.

Neoliberal school reforms reward residents foracting as competitive consumers (Lipsitz 2006).They teach us to ignore the larger context ofour interdependence, and they limit the spaceswhere we might practice this interconnectednesssocially and politically. In so doing, they stuntmoral imagination, shut down collective inquiry,and erode our willingness to engage with differ-ence and uncertainty, ultimately cutting away atthe habits we need for democratic life.

By focusing its organizing efforts on engag-ing neighbourhood-based groups in deliberation,OPEN explicitly taps into the wisdom and willthat animates the very places that neoliberalschool reform characterizes as void of promiseor value. The process asks participants to usetheir life experiences in particular places as astarting point for inquiry. By repositioning inhab-itants with diverse commitments as active partic-ipants in collective inquiry, the deliberative pro-cess challenges the construction of those mostaffected by neoliberal school reform as either


316 Alice Huff

passive victims of neoliberalism or reconstitutedneoliberal subjects (Pedroni 2011).

The deliberative process creates a place fora type of collective moral endeavour that isactively discouraged by the frenetic competitivelandscape created by neoliberal school reform.OPEN’s model requires, and provides support for,long-term engagement with different others anddifficult issues. An important component of thisactivity involves imagining the possible outcomesof various actions from various viewpoints. Thissort of imagining is a creative act, but it is alsoa moral one in that it expands the scope ofindividual experience and requires an acknowl-edgement of social interconnectedness.

Such engagement carries the potential for bi-ased, exclusionary, and coercive interactions, butis ultimately necessary. Collective inquiry doesnot protect participants from risk of failure orsubjugation; the very nature of the process mayput it at risk for cooptation (Purcell 2008). Itdoes, however, potentially provide a place wherepeople can learn habits and skills that may allowthem not only to contest neoliberalization, but tolive more democratically.

Conclusion

As a spatial strategy, neoliberal school reform inNew Orleans largely protects and expands classand race advantage. It creates fertile ground forthe influence of venture philanthropy on cityplanning; it undermines democratic mechanismsof governance; and it systematically erodes civiccapacity as a basis for the kind of collectiveaction that might challenge the aforementioneddevelopments. New Orleans is a less just citybecause of these reforms.

The task of democratizing the city and itsschools is daunting. In advocating for spaces ofdemocratic learning, I do not mean to imply thatpedagogical strategies are sufficient to counterthe spatial tactics described in the earlier sec-tions of this article. It remains to be seen whateffects OPEN’s work, for instance, will have onthese structural concerns.

If, however, democracy is not something thatcan be achieved once and for all through politicalor economic means but is instead an ongoingtask that requires constant learning, pedagogical

spaces such as those fostered by OPEN are nec-essary. We need these spaces not only becausethey may produce desired outcomes but becausethey provide a context for people to collectivelyask better questions about why things are asthey are, and to work towards something moredemocratic. If we are to effectively counter ne-oliberal school reforms and the city they pro-duce, if we are to move towards more just alter-natives, we must learn from these activities howto create democracy, not once and for all—as inthe traditional education model where acceptedtruths are transferred and received—but overand over again, as we have new experiences thatcause us to reflect upon our commitments toparticular ideas and ways of being in the world.

This is not an easy task under the best ofcircumstances, and it is made infinitely moredifficult in the spaces of the neoliberal city.The task of scholars interested in the spatialaspects of school reform is not only to bet-ter understand the relationship between schoolpolicy and neoliberal urbanization, but also toexamine the practices that challenge, evade, andrework these processes. Even in a city that ispowerfully shaped by neoliberal reforms, thesepractices exist. Alternative urban futures dependupon our ability to identify and support suchefforts.

References

Ball, S. 1993. Education markets, choices and social class:The market as a class strategy in the UK and USA. BritishJournal of Sociology of Education 14(1): 3–19.

Bartlett, L., M. Frederick, T. Gulbrandsen, and E. Murillo. 2002.The marketization of education: Public schools for privateends. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 33(1): 5–29.

Brenner, N., and N. Theodore. 2002. Cities and the geogra-phies of “actually existing neoliberalism.” Antipode 34(3):356–386.

Buras, K. L. 2011. Race, charter schools, and conscious cap-italism: On the spatial politics of whiteness as property(and the unconscionable assault on black New Orleans).Harvard Educational Review 81(2): 296–331.

Chamlee-Wright, E., and V. Storr. 2009. There’s no place likeNew Orleans: Sense of place and community recovery inthe ninth ward after Hurricane Katrina. Journal of UrbanAffairs 31(5): 615–634.

Cooper, C. 2005. Old line families plot the future in NewOrleans. The Wall Street Journal, September 8, A1.

Cowen Institute. 2011. The Recovery School District in NewOrleans 2003–2011. http://www.coweninstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/RSD-Timeline-4-6-11.pdf.



———. 2012. The State of Public Education in New Orleans:2012 Report. New Orleans: Cowen Institute for PublicEducation Initiatives. http://www.coweninstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/SPENO-20121.pdf.

Dewey, J. 1976 [1939]. Creative democracy: The task beforeus. In The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, Vol. 14,ed. J. Boydston. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UniversityPress, 224–230.

Dingerson, L. 2006. Dismantling a community timeline. TheHigh School Journal 90(2): 8–15.

Fenwick, A. 2009. The door-to-door salesman. ColumbiaNews, July 30. http://columbia.news21.com/2009/index8ee8.html?p=2270.

Ferguson, B., and K. Royal. 2009. Admission requirements andcharter schools. New Orleans: Center for Action Researchon New Orleans School Reforms.

Giroux, H. A. 2004. Public pedagogy and the politics of neo-liberalism: Making the political more pedagogical. PolicyFutures in Education 2(3&4): 494–503.

Henig, R. J., and J. A. MacDonald. 2002. Locational decisionsof charter schools: Probing the market metaphor. SocialStudies Quarterly 83(4): 962–980.

IRP (Institute on Race and Poverty). 2010. The state of publicschools in post Katrina New Orleans: The challenge ofcreating equal opportunity. Minnesota: IRP, University ofMinnesota Law School.

Klein, N. 2007. The shock doctrine. New York: MetropolitanBooks.

Leitner, H., E. S. Sheppard, K. Sziarto, and A. Maringanti.2007. Contesting urban futures: Decentering neoliberalism.In Contesting neoliberalism: Urban frontiers, ed. H. Leitner,J. Peck, and E. S. Sheppard. New York: Guilford, 1–25.

Lipman, P. 2011. The new political economy of urban edu-cation: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. NewYork: Routledge.

Lipsitz, G. 2006. Learning from New Orleans: The socialwarrant of hostile privatism and competitive consumercitizenship. Cultural Anthropology 21(3): 451–468.

Lubienski, C. 2005. Public schools in marketized environ-ments: Shifting incentives and unintended consequences ofcompetition-based educational reforms. American Journalof Education 111(4): 464–486.

Lubienski, C., C. Gulosino, and P. Weitzel. 2009. Schoolchoice and competitive incentives: Mapping the distri-bution of educational opportunities across local educa-tion markets. American Journal of Education 105: 601–647.

Meese, E., S. M. Butler, and K. R. Holmes. 2005. From tragedyto triumph: Principled solutions for rebuilding lives andcommunities. Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation.

OPEN (Orleans Public Education Network). 2011a. Or-leans Public Education Network. http://www.opennola.org/home/.

———. 2011b. History: Orleans Public Education Network.http://www.opennola.org/home/?page id=750.

———. 2012. The People’s Agenda. New Orleans: OPEN.http://www.opennola.org/home/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/The-Peoples-Agenda-05-2012.pdf.

Pappas, G. F. 2008. John Dewey’s ethics: Democracy as expe-rience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Peck, J. 2006. Liberating the city: Between New York and NewOrleans. Urban Geography, 27: 681–713.

Pedroni, T. 2007. Market movements: African American in-volvement in school voucher reform. New York: Routledge.

———. 2011. Urban shrinkage as a performance of white-ness: Neoliberal urban restructuring, education, and racialcontainment in the post-industrial, global niche city. Dis-course: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 32(2):203–215.

Puckett, J., and R. Gilyard. 2006. Rebuilding and transforming:A plan for improving public education in New Orleans.Boston: Boston Consulting Group for the Bring New Or-leans Back Commission, Educational Committee.

Purcell, M. 2008. Recapturing democracy: Neoliberalizationand the struggle for alternative urban futures. New York:Routledge.

Rogers, J., and J. Oakes. 2005. John Dewey speaks to Brown:Research, democratic social movement strategies, and thestruggle for education on equal terms. Teachers CollegeRecord 107: 2178–2203.

Saltman, K. 2007. Capitalizing on disaster: Taking and break-ing public schools. Boulder: Paradigm.

———. 2010. The gift of education: Public education andventure philanthropy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.


Documents

Reforming the city: Neoliberal school reform and democratic contestation in New Orleans