Doctoral Dissertation Research: Contested Geographies of Education: Neighborhood Schooling Struggles in Post-Katrina New Orleans

在美国各地，城市已成为旨在促进以市场为基础解决公共教育问题的政策的试验场。这些举措通常依赖于特许学校的制度，这些学校是公共资助的，但往往是私人管理的，对当地选举出来的实体只负责最少。本研究项目通过分析新奥尔良四个以社区为基础的团体在其社区重新开办学校的尝试，考察特许学校改革面临的基于地方的挑战。新奥尔良90%的公立学校学生目前就读于特许学校，因此它一直是市场改革的主要试验场，也是这种改革可能受到质疑的方式之一。通过关注以社区为基础的团体在公共领域解决学校问题的能力，该项目将丰富对基于地方的社会运动的理解，扩大公共教育政策讨论中通常涉及的问题的范围，并支持通过集体调查和行动创造更民主的城市空间的持续努力。由于学校服务于各种各样的社会、政治和经济目的，学校改革的影响远远超出了学校的范围。随着以市场为基础的学校改革努力重新审视城市日常生活的重要方面，它们在学校教育的目的和提供以及社区成员在影响城市教育政策和实践方面的作用方面引发了激烈的斗争。该项目将采用多种方法，包括文献分析、参与者观察和访谈，以检查小组成员如何在卡特里娜飓风后的新奥尔良特许学校制度下发展、理解和追求他们的学校议程。具体的研究问题包括：社区学校团体如何根据新自由主义学校政策的影响来表达他们的不满，以及在支持社区学校方面提出了哪些反话语？社区学校团体使用什么策略将这些反话语插入更大的公共领域，效果如何？种族、阶级和性别在这些斗争中有何牵连？在这些以地方为基础的努力中，为了实现特定的学校议程，发生了什么学习？这些活动的过程和结果的民主含义是什么？拟议的研究提供了(1)对通过在社区层面发起的集体行动来产生替代新自由主义政策的学校教育的可能性的实证分析，(2)对现有的关于人们如何以及为什么参与此类运动，以及地点和种族告知策略和实现预期目标的能力的方式的政治经济争论的社会文化对比，以及(3)对人们如何学习做民主工作的分析。包括识别和构建共同问题，构建社会探究空间，协商差异，以及驾驭不平衡的权力关系。

Across the United States, cities have become testing grounds for policies designed to promote market-based solutions to problems in public education. These initiatives commonly rely on the institution of charter schools, which are publicly funded but often privately managed and only minimally accountable to locally elected entities. This research project examines place-based challenges to charter reform through analysis of the attempts of four New Orleans neighborhood-based groups to re-open schools in their communities. With 90 percent of its public school students currently enrolled in charter schools, New Orleans has been a major testing ground market-based reform, and of the ways such reforms might be contested. By focusing on the ability of neighborhood-based groups to address schooling concerns in the public sphere, this project will enrich understanding of place-based social movements, expand the range of concerns commonly addressed in discussions of public education policy, and support ongoing efforts to create more democratic urban spaces through collective inquiry and action. Because schools serve a variety of social, political, and economic purposes, the effects of school reform reach far beyond the school house walls. As they re-work essential aspects of daily life in cities, market-based school reform efforts have provoked intense struggles over the purpose and provision of schooling and the role of community members in influencing urban education policy and practice.The project will use multiple methods, including document analysis, participant observation, and interviews in order to examine how group members develop, understand, and pursue their schooling agendas under the post-Katrina charter school regime in New Orleans. The specific research questions include: How do neighborhood schooling groups frame their grievances with respect to the effects of neoliberal schooling policies and what counter discourses are advanced in support of neighborhood schooling? What strategies do neighborhood schooling groups use to insert those counter discourses into a larger public sphere and to what effect? How are race, class, and gender implicated in these struggles? What learning is taking place in these place-based efforts to realize particular schooling agendas and what are the democratic implications of both the processes and results of their activities? The proposed research provides (1) an empirical analysis of the possibilities for producing schooling alternatives to neoliberal policies through collective action initiated at the neighborhood level, (2) a socio-cultural counterpoint to existing political-economic arguments regarding how and why people become involved in such movements, and the ways that place and race inform strategy and the ability to achieve desired goals, and (3) an analysis of how people learn to do democratic work, including identifying and framing common problems, constructing space for social inquiry, negotiating difference, and navigating uneven power relations.