Five Years of Post-Katrina Educational Reform Research Conference

September 23-25, 2010

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Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 initiated massive reforms in the New Orleans educational landscape. Regional population shifts, a state takeover of the New Orleans Public Schools, and the creation of the nation's most charter-intensive urban area have marked what Time magazine has called “America's greatest education lab.” The massive structural changes ushered in post-Katrina have led to a host of changes in the makeup of the teaching force, in curriculum, in school financing, and in school community relationships. This complex intermingling of change forces has made the study of New Orleans schools somewhat challenging.

 

Responding to this need, the Five Years of Post-Katrina Educational Reform Research Conference will convene scholars for a three day meeting in New Orleans. National scholars with areas of expertise that are critical to studying New Orleans (school choice, urban teacher preparation, urban school governance, charters, etc.) will be invited to bring their understandings to bear on the post-Katrina case. Additionally, scholars studying schools in storm-impacted communities in Louisiana will bring their empirical understandings of schooling in this new environment. The conference will be structured so that national issues and local empirical evidence are presented independently, and then co-mingled in specially facilitated sessions that map out research and policy questions for the next five years of post-Katrina school research. An edited volume is expected to be published based on selected papers presented at the conference.

The Conference Committee