Twenty-first-century Jim Crow Schools ─ The Impact of Charters and Vouchers on Public Education

How charter schools have taken hold in three cities—and why parents, teachers, and community members are fighting back

This concise yet powerful volume examines the rise of charters in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York, exploring the specific conditions that spurred their proliferation. Raynard Sanders (New Orleans), David Stovall (Chicago), and Terrenda White (New York City) show how these schools—private institutions, usually established in poor or working-class African American and Latinx communities—promote competition instead of collaboration and are chiefly driven by financial interests. Sanders, Stovall, and White also reveal how charters position themselves as “public” to secure tax money but use their private status to hide data about enrollment and salaries. Furthermore, the authors document the lasting consequences of charter school expansion, including the displacement of experienced African American teachers; the rise of a rigid, militarized pedagogy; and community disruption.

Raynard Sanders has more than thirty years of experience in teaching, educational administration, and economic and community organizing and development. He has served as a New Orleans high school principal, Executive Director of the National Faculty at New Orleans, and Director of the Urban Education Graduate Program at Southern University at New Orleans.

David Stovall is Professor of Educational Policy Studies and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Terrenda White is an assistant professor of Sociology and Education at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and former elementary school teacher and Prison Education Initiative coordinator.

Karen Lewis is president of Chicago Teachers Union. The only National Board Certified Teacher to lead a U.S. labor union, she also serves as executive vice president to the Illinois Federation of Teachers and as vice president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Thomas Pedroni is Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies and Policy Sociology at Wayne State University and Director of the Detroit Data and Democracy Project. His first book, Market Movements: African American Involvement in School Voucher Reform, received the 2009 Critics’ Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Association.