The Coup D’état of the New Orleans Public Schools

explores and criticizes the contemporary educational reforms of the New Orleans public school system.

“Illegal. Fraudulent. Criminal. Unconstitutional. These words merely understate the dehumanizing abuses the families, children and educators in New Orleans are continuing to fight back against. When I lived there and worked at the University of New Orleans, in close partnership with the public schools, I was inspired by the rich cultural heritage preserved and passed on in neighborhood institutions, including the city schools. What has been done to the schools and neighborhoods in this city is nothing short of war—not only against the Black community but also against freedom and democracy. It is my fervent hope that in the tradition of David Walker’s 1829 , Raynard Sanders’s meticulously researched and courageous eye-witness testimony, , will also serve as a radicalizing wake-up call to those of us who cherish liberation and believe in defending human freedom. Let us all say with the people of New Orleans: ‘We won’t bow down. We don’t know how.’”—Joyce E. King, Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair for Urban Teaching, Learning and Leadership, Georgia State University

“Raynard Sanders provides a vivid account of how the educational ‘Miracle in New Orleans’ following Hurricane Katrina has created an educational marketplace that offers ‘choice’ to the most advantaged students and a revolving door of failing schools to the least advantaged, while re-segregating the city even more starkly than before. Sanders meticulously outlines the equity and access issues that have emerged in a marketplace that provides only the illusion of school choice to many families who have witnessed the destruction of neighborhood schools that were once the hub of their communities. is critically important reading for those who care about the future of public education and the fight for equal rights in American society.”—Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor Emeritus, Stanford University and President, Learning Policy Institute

“The struggle over the fate and future of public education has played out with notable intensity in New Orleans, Louisiana, never more significantly than in recent years as NOLA has become—post-Hurricane Katrina—the laboratory for a thoroughgoing corporate takeover of public education. In this compelling account the educator/activist/scholar Raynard Sanders documents the treacherous alliance that formed between old-school white supremacists and modern-day corporate raiders eager to get their grasping hands on what they perversely perceive as the ‘public education market.’ illustrates the case in compelling detail, and shows us precisely what’s at stake: education as a basic human right versus schooling as a product for sale in the marketplace; democracy as a vital force for human development or the veritable erasure of the public; a step forward in the abiding and courageous press of Black parents for a full and decent education for their children as a pathway to authentic equality versus a further continuance of the shameful American tradition of apartheid schooling. This is a necessary book.”—William Ayers, Author of several books on education including , , and

“Raynard Sanders follows the trail of money to show how a group of white community-and-political leaders snatched control of the public schools from the citizens of New Orleans. They turned the schools over to profit-driven ‘reformers’ who made it nearly impossible for parents to participate in any meaningful way in their children’s schools, and they discarded a largely African American work force—eerily reminiscent of what happened in New Orleans following Reconstruction. Sanders peers behind the curtain of the ‘New Orleans Miracle,’ and what he shows us is not pretty.”—Al Kennedy, Historian and Author of