Lalka Research Fellow Report

Freedom Schools 2.0: The Civil Rights Entrepreneurs of the
New Orleans Public Education Reform Movement

Robert Tice Lalka

Southern Research Fellow Robert Tice Lalka is a graduate student in public policy at Duke University. For his report for Southern Growth, Lalka conducted a qualitative analysis of the efforts of young people involved in educational reform in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Lalka contends that, despite the enormous devastation caused by the storm, Katrina created an opportunity for dramatic reform of New Orleans’ notoriously ineffective school system. Leading this reform are ground forces of idealistic young college graduates from across the country, drawn to the city by the images of New Orleans’ destruction, the ineptitude of government response to the crisis, and a sense of opportunity to effect change for the city’s most disadvantaged citizens. Lalka argues that in many ways these young people are reminiscent of the Mississippi Freedom Schools civil rights activists who came before them — but he also emphasizes the uniqueness of their approach, referring to them as "civil rights entrepreneurs" who bring new perspectives to solving these problems.

Lalka’s research draws on interviews with thirty-five leaders in the Orleans Parish Public Schools education reform movement who help provide perspective on the current state of public education. He finds a public school system with striking racial disparities: while sixty-three percent of the population of Greater New Orleans is white, approximately ninety percent of the Orleans Parish public school student population is African American. These students are also disproportionately impoverished: forty-four percent of African American children in the Greater New Orleans metropolitan area live below the poverty line and seventy-four percent of the students in Orleans Parish's public schools receive free lunch.

Additionally, the effects of the storm helped produce a number of changes in New Orleans schools. Today, there are three main types of schools in the city: Orleans Parish Public Schools that are run by the local district, the Recovery School District public and charter schools that are run by the State Department of Education, and autonomous charter schools that have received independent charters since the storm. Teachers unions have been done away with, and all of these schools are open-enrollment, meaning that any student living in the district can apply to attend any of these schools regardless of his or her location within the city.

Lalka details organizations such as New Schools For New Orleans, New Leaders For New Schools, Teach NOLA, City Year, and Teach For America, which have all focused on the post-Katrina moment as an opportunity to change socioeconomic disparities through education. In particular, Teach For America is fueling an unprecedented influx of human capital into the region by bringing about 750 graduates from America’s best colleges and universities to New Orleans over the next three years.

Lalka’s research paper chronicles what the developments in New Orleans mean for education policy through the lens of these young educators’ on the ground experiences. He details eight main attributes that these young people offer to the effort to reform Orleans Parish’s failed education system:

1. They can work long hours and stay committed to the grueling task at hand.
2. They face the challenges before them with an entrepreneurial attitude.
3. They believe that every child can excel academically and they instill their students with that belief.
4. Their idealism is backed by remarkable resolve.
5. Their idealism is results-oriented.
6. They incorporate technology and other creative educational tools into instruction.
7. They bring an outside perspective and energy to the schools where they work.
8. Their critical thinking and problem solving skills provide a means to transcend stereotypes and bring personal interaction across racial and socioeconomic barrier

Download Robert Lalka's Report