Charter schools have been promoted as an equitable and innovative solution to the problems plaguing urban schools. Advocates claim that charter schools benefit working-class students of color by offering them access to a "portfolio" of school choices. In Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space, Kristen Buras presents a very different account. Her case study of New Orleans—where veteran teachers were fired en masse and the nation's first all-charter school district was developed—shows that such reform is less about the needs of racially oppressed communities and more about the production of an urban space economy in which white entrepreneurs capitalize on black children and neighborhoods. In this revealing book, Buras draws on critical theories of race, political economy, and space, as well as a decade of research on the ground to expose the criminal dispossession of black teachers and students who have contributed to New Orleans' culture and history. Mapping federal, state, and local policy networks, she shows how the city's landscape has been reshaped by a strategic venture to privatize public education. She likewise chronicles grassroots efforts to defend historic schools and neighborhoods against this assault, revealing a commitment to equity and place and articulating a vision of change that is sure to inspire heated debate among communities nationwide.

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.

Challenging the popular perception that the free market can objectively ameliorate inequality and markedly improve student academic achievement, this book examines the overly positivistic rhetoric surrounding charter schools. Taking a multifocal approach, this book examines how charter schools reproduce inequality in public education. By linking charter schools to broader social issues and political economic factors, such as neoliberalism, race, and class, The Charter School Solution presents a more complete and nuanced assessment of charter schools in the context of the American public education system.

Through powerful narratives of parents of Black and Latinx students with disabilities, this book provides a unique look at the relationship between disability, race, urban space, and market-driven educational policies. Offering significant insights into complex forms of educational exclusion, the text illustrates the actual challenges and paradoxes of school choice faced by today’s parents. Included are explanations for the kinds of injustices students with disabilities face every day, as well as resources that can be helpful for engaging in collective action aimed at improving educational services for all children. This accessible resource offers recommendations to help policymakers, charter school administrators, teachers, and families tackle the challenges of school choice while dealing effectively with the new generation of inclusive schools. Book Features: Presents a first-of-its-kind look at how Black and Latinx parents of students with disabilities experience market-driven approaches to education. Identifies the consequences of push-out practices in charter schools and how families experience and resist these practices. Situates school choice amid historical and compounding forms of exclusion associated with geographical (neighborhood) and social (disability, race, and class) locations. Provides lessons learned and valuable guidance for creating a new generation of inclusive charter schools.

This book tells the gripping inside story of the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem. It is a penetrating look at the real world of education reform—the hundreds of small decisions and big risks that go into making a school succeed. A hero of the civil rights movement, a Wall Street star, inner-city activists, educators, parents, and students all came together to create a groundbreaking school that, in its best years, far outperformed public schools in the neighborhoods in which most of its children lived. At the same time the book looks at education reform through a broader lens, discussing recent research and issues facing the charter movement today. It answers two fundamental questions: What makes a school succeed or fail? And how can these lessons be applied to other schools to make them better? The result is not only an exciting narrative of how one school fought to succeed despite the odds, but also an illuminating glimpse into the future of American education. Mary C. Bounds, an award-winning journalist, has written for the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and other publications. She lives in Chappaqua, New York. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker was chief of staff for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Virginia state director of the Congress of Racial Equality, and executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; he helped organize the 1963 March on Washington. For 37 years he served as senior pastor at Harlem's Canaan Baptist Church of Christ. He lives in Chester, Virginia.

"It is the first book examining the experiences of Black and Latinx students with disabilities and their families with market-driven educational policies. It offers a unique theoretical contribution examining the relationship between disability, race, urban space, and market-driven educational policies. It uses powerful and emotional narratives that unveil the collateral damages of market-driven policies. It explains how Black and Latinx parents of students with disabilities experience and resist pushout practices in charter schools. It identifies the consequences of pushout practices in charter schools that are more severe that forcing parents to move to another school"--

As charter schools enter their third decade, research in this key sector remains overwhelmingly contradictory and confused. Many studies are narrowly focused; some do not meet the standards for high-quality academic research. In this definitive work, Wohlstetter and her colleagues isolate and distill the high-quality research on charter schools to identify the contextual and operational factors that influence these schools’ performances. The authors examine the track record of the charter sector in light of the wide range of goals set for these schools in state authorizing legislation—at the classroom level, the level of the school community, and system-wide. In particular, they show how the evolution of the charter movement has shaped research questions and findings. By highlighting what we know about the conditions for success in charter schools, the authors make a significant contribution to current debates in policy and practice, both within the charter sector and in the larger landscape of public education.