Educational Inequities in the New Orleans Charter School System
New Orleans provides a model for examining the feasibility of a nearly 100% charter, market based system of schools. This is truly an education experiment on a grand scale, and because New Orleans’ system is unique, the nation is watching. How is it working?
A recent SCOPE study examines the New Orleans experiment in terms of the experiences of students and families managing their way through a portfolio of charter schools. Among many findings, the research shows that New Orleans reforms have created a set of schools that are highly stratified by race, class, and educational advantage, operating in a hierarchy that provides very different types of schools and to different types of children. While some have choice; others do not.
A new book, Global Education Reform: How Privatization and Public Investment Influence Education Outcomes, provides a powerful analysis of these different ends of an ideological spectrum – from market-based experiments to strong state investments in public education. Written by education researchers, the authors compare the privatization and public investment approaches to education in three pairs of countries: Chile and Cuba, Sweden and Finland, and the U.S. and Canada. The book consolidates the best available evidence on the implementation issues and specific results of these different approaches.
This infographic was a collaboration between the Schott Foundation and SCOPE.
