Charter Schools Archives

The Billionaire Backers of Louisiana’s Voucher Push: Who’s Funding the Privatization of Public Education?

May 18, 2025

The fight over Louisiana’s public schools isn’t just playing out in classrooms—it’s playing out in boardrooms, campaign finance reports, and legislative backrooms. With the state preparing to launch the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise (LA GATOR) Scholarship Program in the 2025–2026 school year, the future of public education in Louisiana is being reshaped […]

Public Money, Private Control: Inside New Orleans’ Charter School Overhaul

May 11, 2025

New Orleans Reimagined or Rewritten? After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans became the nation’s first all-charter school district. Nearly 20 years later, the results are still contested—and the promises of equity remain unfulfilled. In the nearly two decades since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has been held up as a national experiment in education reform. The city […]

What Would Closing the U.S. Department of Education Mean for New Orleans Public Schools?

April 12, 2025

The idea of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education isn’t new. It’s a longstanding talking point for conservatives who view federal oversight of schools as government overreach. In fact, during the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, former Congressman Ron Paul from Texas called for the abolition of the Department of Education, and his proposal was met […]

Study Links Charter Schools to Decline of Traditionally Educated Teachers

November 8, 2022

A recent study from the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH) found that increasing a district's charter school enrollment by only 10% decreases the supply of teachers who have a bachelor's degree in education by as much as 15.2%.

Parents Join Step Up Louisiana Rally and March to OPSB to Demand Better Schools

December 20, 2019

More than 50 workers, parents, and members of Step Up Louisiana held a rally on Thursday evening before marching to the final Orleans Parish School Board meeting of 2019 to demand change. New Orleans is the only all-charter school system in the nation – a venture that many legislatures in both the city and state […]

Urban League of Louisiana: “Critical Areas of Opportunity Must Be Addressed by NOLA Public Schools”

November 12, 2019

Last week, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) released the annual School Performance Scores. Each school in the state is rated A-F based on student performance during state testing, and how many students earn college credit before graduating high school. While acknowledging the work of New Orleans Public Schools (NOPS) teachers, staff, and administrators, the […]

The Business of Selling Black and Poor Children to Business

October 4, 2019

In Louisiana, we have created a “charter-school system” with broad latitude, with the permission of BESE, to be unaccountable to our families, our tax-payers, and our local school districts. The losers in this unaccountable system are our students. There is a caste system that exists where children of color, and their families, are forced through […]

Op-Ed: The Mental and Economic Enslavement of Children Through State Charters: Are Our Children for Sale?

August 25, 2019

Robert Green Ingersoll once opined, “Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.” Our State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education through the charter school approval system has become a market to sell the children of our state to the […]