New Orleans Public Schools Research Articles

Diet Quality Is Lower for Those Who Skip Lunch Among a Sample of Predominantly Black Adolescents.

To compare the dietary quality among adolescents who skip lunch and those who do not and explore associations between school-level variables, demographic variables and lunch skipping. Cross-sectional. Public schools in New Orleans, Louisiana (n = 21). 718 adolescents. Adolescents participated in a 24-hour dietary recall using the Automated Self-Administered 24-Hour (ASA24) Dietary Assessment Tool early in 2013. Data were converted into Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2010) scores. Mean scores were compared between students who skipped lunch and those who did not. A multilevel analysis was conducted to assess relationships between school environment, demographics, and lunch skipping. Of the 718 respondents, 88.3% were Black and 15.3% skipped lunch. Students who ate lunch had a mean HEI score of 46.6 compared to a mean score of 41.7 for students who skipped lunch (p < .001). Students who skipped lunch also had significantly lower intake of total vegetables (p = .02), whole fruits (p < .001), total dairy (p = .003), total protein (p < .001). Skipping lunch was associated with lower quality diet, though diet quality was low among all students. Considering over 15% of the sample did not eat lunch in a closed-campus school setting, further research should consider how to encourage students to participate in the National School Lunch Program, which has the ability to increase diet quality in adolescents.

Public Schools and Ghetto Formation in Interwar New Orleans

In New Orleans, racially segregated schools played a central role in the creation of racially distinct neighborhoods beginning with the school building boom that followed World War I. Focusing on the Tremé, Central City, and Broadmoor neighborhoods, this article demonstrates that schools figured prominently in debates over the future of racially mixed neighborhoods, in the formation of isolated black ghettoes, and in the development of white enclaves. In doing so, the article addresses a gap in the historiography of American metropolitan change, which generally overlooks the impact of schools and school policies upon urban development and residential settlement patterns.

Connecting the Disconnected

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans on August 29, 2005, the failure of the levees resulted in the largest single human-made disaster in the United States. In addition to the physical devastation of the city, the landscape of public schools in New Orleans was permanently altered, as was the national dialogue about school reform in the United States. The contested terrain of urban school reform in post-Katrina New Orleans led to the establishment of the National Coalition for Quality Education in New Orleans, an ad hoc group of New Orleans and national scholars who believe that New Orleans education, if rebuilt with thoughtful attention, can become a model for improving urban education in the nation. Drawing on data from two coalition-sponsored equity forums held during the summers of 2006 and 2007, this article discusses findings from the work of the coalition that deepen our understanding of how scholars can work with communities around education reform in three ways. First, it is crucial for scholars to focus work on the expressed needs of the community rather than from the imposed authority of the research community. Second, making use of academic research expertise requires acknowledging the diversity within the communities where the reform is being implemented. Finally, sustainable relationships between researchers and communities must be supported with mechanisms that facilitate clear expectations and communication. It is my hope that readers come away with a sense that working with marginalized communities to shape educational reform agendas is an important aspect of sustainable reforms.

“I Had To Teach Hard”: Traumatic Conditions and Teachers in Post-Katrina Classrooms

“I Had To Teach Hard”: Traumatic Conditions and Teachers in Post-Katrina Classrooms Deborah Alvarez Introduction “The general impact of a natural disaster makes it one of the most challenging crises to be addressed by a teacher” (Damiani, 2006, p 35). Before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005, one hundred and twenty one schools in the New Orleans Public Schools (NOPS) system were in the process of being transferred to the newly created, state run Recovery School District (RSD). On September 29, 2005, the New Orleans Parish School Board fired all 7500 employees, including every teacher. If the change in school leadership and the historical neglect that precipitated the changes were not enough, the disaster brought another layer of crises that would confront teachers as they tried to resume educating the returning students to the public schools. This research study examines the instructional practices of teachers following the disaster and explores the role written literacies played in their instructional adaptations. In this two-year study, the evidence revealed that a disaster event required teachers to make specific changes in disciplinary content and instructional practice. All the teachers acknowledged that teaching after Katrina’s devastation brought unexpected challenges to the classroom. As one teacher stated, “I had to teach hard. I worked harder that semester than I have in my [whole] teaching career” (Personal Communication, August, 2006). Teachers found instruction after the disaster to be “hard”; teachers not only had to cope with their personal stresses but also had to manage unstable environmental conditions, changes in adolescent behavior, and school disciplinary changes that occurred during the recovery process. For the English Language Arts teachers, oral story telling and written narrative tasks became important tools for coping with the challenges. Existing Curricula for Addressing Traumatic Conditions in the Classroom A natural or man-made disaster is a critical life event, which may result in traumatic stress brought on by the unexpected changes of living without a home, clothing, food or safety. Adults may experience sleeplessness, numbness, recurring nightmares replaying the event, inability to focus, inattentiveness, emotional outbursts, paranoia and more aggressive physical behavior (Dyregrov & Mitchell, 1992). Over time, responses may include physical illness and new physical disabilities or debilitating pain. In adolescents, the stresses from the disaster can be manifested in poor decisions, involvement in risky behaviors, distrust of adults, violent outbursts and/or withdrawal. Research on the effects disasters have upon adolescents has revealed similar conclusions (Goenjian et al., 2001; Warheit et al., 1996; Weems & Overstreet, 2008; Reijneveid, Crone & Verloove-Vanhorick, 2003). Directions for educators on how to handle these behaviors through classroom instruction offer general advice (Picard, 2006) and declare the value of school in creating a safe environment for building resiliency (Brock, Lazarus & Jimerson, 2006; Jaycox et al., 2006; Lerner, Volpe & Lindell, 2003; Kruczek & Salsman, 2006). Since Katrina, some research and information has been gathered about the traumatic stresses that affect teachers and children (Bedford & Kieff, 2009; Carlson et al., 2010; Masten & Obradovic, 2008; Wachtendorf, Brown & Nickel, 2008). However, this array of information has not focused or analyzed what specifically happens in classrooms when teachers attempt to address traumatic stresses through disciplinary content and teaching practices. Even less research has explored what makes teaching after trauma most challenging for teachers. [End Page 28] In 2008, The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, edited by Dorothy Singleton, revealed lessons and literacy activities specifically designed to meet the needs of African-American children (Singleton, 2008). The collection paid special attention to the effects of education, or lack of academic equity, in the New Orleans schools and family environment (Morris, 2008). Chapter four of Singleton’s book, “Culturally Responsive Literacy” suggests that writing activities like journaling, storytelling, and personal narrative promote resiliency in young children. These same activities are also identified as valuable for older children as well and echo a common theme for building classroom accommodations for children affected with traumatic stress, whatever the source (Bedford & Kieff, 2009; Kliman et al., 2005; Tisserand 2007).1 A recurring research theme among all these sources stressed the positive relationship between writing tasks and narrative telling as the initial steps toward psychological recovery from traumatic stresses (Anderson & MacCurdy, 2000; DeSalvo, 1999; Pennebaker, 2000...

New Orleans’s Unique School Reform Effort and Its Potential Implications for Special Education

Four years following the decimation of the New Orleans Public Schools by Hurricane Katrina the city has been described as the center of a unique urban public school reform effort. This effort is a combination of events that transpired just before the storm and those that have occurred as a result of it. In particular some claim that the emerging public school configuration seeks to be one that is comprised entirely of charter schools, thereby allowing public schools in New Orleans to become a “system of schools” as opposed to a traditional school system. While a fundamental operating principle of charter schools is increased student academic achievement in exchange for school autonomy and innovative practices, an additional responsibility of the charter schools in New Orleans is identical to that of their counterpart traditional public schools: the provision of special education services in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. Accordingly, this article presents an overview of the seminal reform events that have occurred to date and discusses the potential implications of this reform effort with respect to the provision of special education services.

Stories at the Center: Story Circles, Educational Organizing, and Fate of Neighborhood Public Schools in New Orleans

Stories at the Center: Story Circles, Educational Organizing, and Fate of Neighborhood Public Schools in New Orleans

The Perceptions of New Orleans Educators on the Process of Rebuilding the New Orleans School System after Katrina

This exploratory study seeks to understand the perceptions of New Orleans educators on the process of rebuilding the school system destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in August, 2005. Interviews with 10 educators and extensive document analysis allowed for an exploration of the phenomenology of this unique case of school reform in response to a natural disaster. Using the theoretical framework of chaos theory, the data reveal that this instance of school reform is influenced heavily by the uncertainties of life in post-Katrina New Orleans and that the presence of both hope and pessimism for positive change indicate a slower, less dramatic change in the New Orleans Public Schools (NOPS) than some had predicted.

Squeezing Public Education: History and Ideology Gang Up on New Orleans

When hurricane Katrina (or, more accurately, the failure of the levees) washed away the New Orleans Public Schools (NOPS) at the end of August 2005, there was relief in many quarters. Within days of the storm, the acting public school superintendent, Ora Watson, declared that the "fiscal crisis of the New Orleans Public Schools" was now over. In hastily assembled meetings, members of the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), state and local politicians, and leaders of the state's education bureaucracy convened to examine the situation. Representatives of the charter school movement, as well as providers of ancillary education services and materials, also convened. The chance to recreate public education in New Orleans from the ground up was an irresistible consequence of Katrina, as well as a dream come true. Before the first waves of refugees began returning to the drowned city, these newly energized social engineers had decided that no public school would reopen (though public schools did open relatively quickly in the neighboring parishes of Jefferson and St. Bernard); that all 7,500 employees of the system (the majority of them teachers) would be terminated; and that whatever schools did open would be charter schools, operating under the aegis of either BESE or NOPS, depending on the type or timing of the charter application.

Education in New Orleans: Some Background

Not much about New Orleans, or Louisiana as a whole, is ordinary. People down here take a particular pride in being distinctly different from everywhere else. This difference is evident not only in the culture, music and food but in the intricacies of local government. Truly understanding the post-storm landscape of education in New Orleans and the metro area requires a grasp of some of the pre-storm realities of New Orleans public schools. This piece will provide a brief overview of three arenas important to understanding the educational landscape of New Orleans--parish governance, desegregation and private schools. Parish governance Geography is crucial to understanding the patterns of migration out of New Orleans particularly after desegregation and during the era of middle-class flight out of urban centers that spanned the late 1980s and early 1990s. Unlike most school systems in America that are governed at a city or town level, Louisiana public schools are collected in parish districts--the equivalent of counties in other states. This parish designation is a throwback to the state's Roman Catholic heritage and an era when civil government was intricately tied to ecclesiastical governance. Each parish, there are 66 in the state, has ah elected school board charged with overseeing all public schools. While most parishes include both rural and urban areas and frequently encompass several municipalities, the boundaries of the city of New Orleans and Orleans Parish (Figure 2) are congruent so that all Orleans Parish public schools are within the city's limits. Orleans Parish is bordered to the east and west by Jefferson Parish, to the southwest by St. Bernard Parish, and to the north by St. Tammany Parish (Figure 1). [FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED] Desegregation The New Orleans white power structure did not move to desegregate the city's schools until 1960. In that year, the School Board subjected black students who applied to attend a white school to an admissions test and finally allowed a carefully selected group of black girls (boys were deemed too threatening) to attend William Frantz and McDonogh No. 19 elementary schools. Although more than 137 African-American kindergarteners applied for admission and were tested, only five were ultimately allowed to proceed into the two elementary schools. They five young girls were subjected to harassment, threats and physical attacks and when they could not be scared away, white parents eventually pulled their students out of the two elementary schools. White parents boycotted McDonogh No. 19 and the four African-American girls who integrated that school attended school alone for the year. At Frantz, some white parents continued to send their children to school but the students who would have been classmates of the schools' sole African-American student, Ruby Bridges, did not come to school so she too completed the school year alone. McDonogh No. 19 never again had a majority white student population and Frantz quickly became a majority African-American school. The dynamics at these two elementary schools played out across the system as the school board implemented its grade-per-year integration plan. By the late 1960s, African-American students outnumbered white students 2-to-1. By 2005, more than 80 percent of students attending public schools in New Orleans were African-American and many schools that had student populations that were 100 percent African-American. The city's demographics before the storm were about two-third African American and just under 30 percent white. As New Orleans schools integrated, many white families moved out of New Orleans into one of the surrounding parishes, particularly to St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes. Other families transferred their students into non-public schools that have remained a significant presence in New Orleans. After Katrina A year after Hurricane Katrina pushed devastating tides through the city's failed levee system damaging 80 percent of the city's public schools; only about half of New Orleans public schools ate scheduled to open by August 2006. …

Comparison of the prevalence of asthma and severity in public vs. private schools in New Orleans, LA

Rationale To compare the prevalence of asthma and asthma-related symptoms and severity between inner-city schoolchildren attending parochial schools and those enrolled in public schools in New Orleans. Methods Students attending New Orleans public and private schools (1460) were screened for asthma using the International Study of Asthma and Allergy in Childhood (ISAAC) in fall 2001. The ISAAC questionnaire assessed current, past and undiagnosed asthma as well as asthma severity in the schoolchildren. The X2 test compared asthma-related outcomes by age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and school type. P values of <0.05 were considered to be significant. Results The sample was 55% female, 82% African-American, and (54% public school. Mean age of the sample was 10.58 years (s.d. 3.90). Students in public schools were significantly more likely to report wheezing ever ( p<0.008), 12 month wheezing ( p<0.01), exercise-induced wheezing ( p<0.001), speech limitations in previous year ( p<0.004), and to be undiagnosed for asthma ( p<0.001). Public school students from lower SES were significantly more likely to report wheezing ever ( p<0.004), 12-month ( p<0.023), to wheeze after exercise ( p<0.018), to be undiagnosed ( p<0.041), to report sleep disturbance ( p<0.053), compared to students of the same SES in private schools. Conclusions Schoolchildren from similar inner-city New Orleans neighborhoods have very different degrees of asthma prevalence and severity when examined by school orientation. Asthma prevalence and severity are significantly greater in schoolchildren who attend public schools compared to those in parochial schools in New Orleans inner-city.

New England Influences on the Formation of Public Schools in New Orleans

New England Influences on the Formation of Public Schools in New Orleans

REPORT ON SCHOLARSHIPS AND LOANS, DEPARTMENT OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE OF THE NEW ORLEANS PUBLIC SCHOOLS

REPORT ON SCHOLARSHIPS AND LOANS, DEPARTMENT OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE OF THE NEW ORLEANS PUBLIC SCHOOLS