Louisiana

In a victory for parents and students fighting mass school closures and charter school expansion, the U.S. Department of Education has opened civil rights investigations in Chicago, Newark and New Orleans after organizers filed federal complaints in May.

"Juking the stats" is a practice now so ingrained in the way education solutions are posed to the public that examples are rampant. An especially egregious example is the way school administration in New Orleans – where the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina was used as an opportunity to summarily fire school teachers and turn over the majority of schools to privately managed, outside charter school operators – is now being marketed as a “solution” for public education everywhere.

The world watched in horror as Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast in 2005. But for New Orleans’ public school students, parents, and teachers, the tragedy of Katrina was just the beginning.

Gina Womack, Executive Director of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children, is speaking tonight at Wheelock College in Boston about how to end the school-to-prison pipeline.

Mass school closures are the "shock doctrine" of the education world. But parents, students, teachers and communities are fighting back to ensure their public schools receive the investments and supports they need to succeed.

A new complaint filed by the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association (VAYLA),  an OTL ally, criticizes schools operating in East New Orleans for failing to meet the language needs of Asian American and Latino students and parents with limited English. The complaint is the culmination of more than two years of investigation into the educational equity and access issues for limited-English speaking communities in New Orleans.

Every revolution needs a declaration. Against a backdrop of surging grassroots discontent with how the nation's K-12 public schools are currently governed, a diverse coalition of leaders from across the country have joined in support of "An Education Declaration to Rebuild America."

In an inspiring display of cross-sector collaboration, the New York City School-Justice Partnership Task Force has released an action plan for NYC officials to reduce the use of suspensions, summonses, and arrests by building common cause between different agencies and communities and implementing positive discipline strategies.