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  • Published: 1 September 2018
  • ISBN: 9780807076064
  • Imprint: Beacon Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $34.99
Categories:

Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools

The Impact of Charters on Public Education



With the NAACP calling for a moratorium on the establishment of charter schools, and a Massachusetts ballot initiative generating national attention before the last election, school privatization is in the news. Critics of charter schools decry their uneven performance, use of public funds, and practice of excluding challenging students.

This concise yet powerful volume examines their rise in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York, exploring the specific conditions that spurred their proliferation. Jim Crow Schools also chronicles the efforts of national and local activists advocating free, high-quality, and equitably-funded public education.

Raynard Sanders (New Orleans), David Stovall (Chicago), and Terrenda White (New York City) show how charter schools - private institutions, usually established in poor or working-class African American and Latinx communities - promote competition instead of collaboration, and are chiefly driven by financial interests.

Sanders, Stovall, and White also reveal how charters position themselves as "public" to secure tax money, but use their private status to hide data about enrollment and salaries. Furthermore, they document the lasting consequences of charter school expansion, including the displacement of experienced African American teachers; the popularization of a rigid, militarized pedagogy; and the destabilization of other community resources.

How charter schools have taken hold in three cities—and why parents, teachers, and community members are fighting back

Charter schools once promised a path towards educational equity, but as the authors of this powerful volume show, market-driven education reforms have instead boldly reestablished a tiered public school system that segregates students by race and class. Examining the rise of charters in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York, authors Raynard Sanders, David Stovall, and Terrenda White show how charters—private institutions, usually set in poor or working-class African American and Latinx communities—promote competition instead of collaboration and are driven chiefly by financial interests. Sanders, Stovall, and White also reveal how corporate charters position themselves as “public” to secure tax money but exploit their private status to hide data about enrollment and salaries, using misleading information to promote false narratives of student success.

In addition to showing how charter school expansion can deprive students of a quality education, the authors document several other lasting consequences of charter school expansion:

   • the displacement of experienced African American teachers
   • the rise of a rigid, militarized pedagogy such as SLANT
   • the purposeful starvation of district schools
   • and the loss of community control and oversight

A revealing and illuminating look at one of the greatest threats to public education, Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools explores how charter schools have shaped the educational landscape and why parents, teachers, and community members are fighting back.

  • Published: 1 September 2018
  • ISBN: 9780807076064
  • Imprint: Beacon Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $34.99
Categories: