Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, the nation’s most radical education overhaul has produced stunning inequality alongside modest test gains

As I sit in Bricolage Academy’s office, frustrated but trying to remain pleasant, I’m having the same conversation again about my son. He’s on the autism spectrum. He is high performing, extremely quiet, and sweet. Despite his IEP, he wasn’t receiving the required services. The special education coordinator had quit in frustration, the school counselor was cut due to budget issues, and my fifth-grader was falling through the cracks.

I’m not just any parent. I’m an advocate who has worked with the CEO since the school’s creation. I have written for national magazines about our system’s problems and challenged the school’s “diversity by design” narrative. Yet here I was, fighting for basic services. If this is my experience, imagine what average parents face.

The Numbers Don’t Add Up

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina replaced New Orleans’ traditional public schools with the nation’s first all-charter system, the grand experiment presents a troubling paradox. With half the students and double the funding, the system has achieved modest academic gains while disempowering the communities it promised to serve.

Before Katrina, New Orleans educated over 65,000 students in 126 schools. Today, just 47,667 students attend 70 schools–a 27% enrollment reduction. Yet per-pupil spending has exploded to approximately $17,000-$20,000, significantly above Louisiana’s state average.

“When you have half the students and twice the resources, you should see transformational results,” says Neil Ranu, a civil rights attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Instead, we see money flowing upward to administrators while classrooms struggle.”

The money trail is revealing. Charter CEOs earn over $200,000 annually, while average teachers make between $44,000-$55,000 if they stay long enough.

The Human Cost

The city’s teacher turnover rate of 28% for new educators doubles that of comparable cities. The displacement began when the state fired the entire education workforce after Katrina, including over 4,000 teachers with an average of 15 years of experience. The teaching force dropped from 71% Black to under 50%.

When ‘Success’ Crumbles

The system’s fragility became apparent at John F. Kennedy High School in spring 2019. On graduation day, 177 students walked across the stage. A month later, state auditors revealed nearly half were ineligible to graduate due to grade changes from F’s to D’s, improper credit recovery, and students taking unsupervised classes at home.

Antonio Travis, director of Black Man Rising, mentored several affected students. “There was shame, self-blame. Many felt they wouldn’t be successful in college.” Families canceled graduation celebrations, uncertain about the future.

The Illusion of Choice

Parents quickly learn that “choice” often means choosing between bad options, especially for children with special needs. At Benjamin Franklin High School, Louisiana’s top-ranked public school, students from minority backgrounds face significant admission barriers. The school serves 39% white students in a city where whites comprise only 10% of public enrollment.

Special Education Crisis

In 2010, ten families sued the state over charter schools admitting too few special-needs students and failing to provide proper services. The resulting federal consent decree remains in effect today, with monitors continuing to find systematic violations, including parents being excluded from meetings, services not being provided, and evaluations being denied.

Right now, Louisiana U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey is currently presiding over the dissolution of the special-needs consent decree related to New Orleans schools. Because New Orleans public schools have no oversight, and no unions to fight to ensure the law is followed, we, as parents of children with special needs, have to fight to get our stories to the judge so hopefully he will keep it in place.

Economic Verdict

For a system serving 84% Black students, the economic impact is devastating. The racial wealth gap has widened dramatically since Katrina. White households now hold 13 times the wealth of Black families–$181,000 versus $18,000 median net worth. New Orleans went from 67% Black to 57%, losing over 120,000 Black residents.

Missing Pieces

Walk through charter schools and notice what’s absent or insufficient. Arts programs have declined; fewer offer pre-kindergarten, and students average 35-minute bus commutes. Basic skills, such as cursive instruction—required by state law for signing legal documents—are often ignored. “The children only learn what’s tested,” observes one advocate. “Everything else gets cut.”

The Honest Assessment

As the 20th anniversary of Katrina approaches, New Orleans offers a sobering lesson. With unprecedented resources and freedom, the charter system produced modest academic gains alongside community economic decline and systematic exclusion of vulnerable students.

“When people ask if they should move out of the city for better education,” says one advocate, “my answer is: if you can afford to move, you should. This system is not built to support our children.”

The comment hangs like an indictment not just of a school system, but of a 20-year experiment that promised everything and delivered prosperity for some, displacement for others, and continued struggle for families who need excellent public education most.

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Ashana Bigard is a fifth generation New Orleanian and lifelong resident of the Crescent City. A mother of three, Ashana is a tireless advocate for equity and social justice, especially in her work advocating for children and families in New Orleans and Louisiana. She leads the Education Justice Project of New Orleans, where she organizes and advocates for the rights of students and parents. Ashana is an adult ally advisor to United Students of New Orleans. She also serves as a Community Faculty member with Tulane University’s Center for Public Service.

A quiet decision from the Supreme Court today—one that received far less media coverage than it should have—may well be remembered as a key moment in the battle over the soul of public education in the United States. The justices, deadlocked in a 4-4 split, left in place an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that invalidated the approval of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, a publicly funded but explicitly religious charter school. For now, the Oklahoma court’s ruling stands: St. Isidore will not open its digital doors.

But the national implications remain ominously unresolved. In fact, this case is a powder keg, and the fuse is still lit.

The question at hand is simple yet profound: Can a religious institution operate a publicly funded charter school? And if so, what happens to the long-held constitutional firewall between church and state?

As someone who has worn nearly every hat in the charter school space—educator, parent, donor, and researcher—I see this not just as a legal question, but as a deeply personal and moral one. And as the former Education Chair of the California NAACP state conference that authored the landmark 2016 call for a charter school moratorium, I also view this moment as a test of whether we will heed the alarms we sounded nearly a decade ago.

My Charter School Journey: From Support to Skepticism

I did not come to charter school advocacy lightly, nor did I arrive at my critiques easily. Like many educators of color, I was initially drawn to charter schools by their promise of innovation, flexibility, and equity in the 1990s. I taught in and collaborated with charter schools that I at the time thought truly sought to meet the needs of underserved Black and Brown communities. I also donated to schools I believed were doing right by students of color. And as a parent, I have researched all educational avenues available—traditional public, charter, and private schools—trying to navigate the same complex choices facing millions of families.

But experience has been a clarifying teacher.

Over time, my research began to paint a different picture. Instead of ushering in a new era of educational equity, many charter schools—particularly those operating without meaningful oversight—have replicated and even deepened segregation and educational gaps. They’ve too often operated as private entities using public dollars, free from many of the transparency and accountability requirements that govern traditional public schools.

And now, with the push to create religious charter schools, we are witnessing an even more dangerous convergence: the privatization of public education with the religious entanglement our founders explicitly warned against.

The Establishment Clause: Not a Technicality, but a Constitutional Guardrail

Let’s be clear: The debate over St. Isidore is not about religious freedom—it’s about the use of public funds for religious instruction. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits the government from establishing, supporting, or favoring any religion. That’s not a footnote in our Constitution—it’s one of its bedrock principles.

By approving St. Isidore, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board attempted to bulldoze that wall of separation. St. Isidore’s application was transparent in its intentions: it would operate according to Catholic teachings, prioritize Catholic doctrine in hiring, and include religious instruction in its curriculum—all while receiving public funds.

Had the Supreme Court broken that 4-4 tie in favor of St. Isidore, it would have ushered in a radical reinterpretation of the Establishment Clause. It would have set a precedent allowing any religious group to receive public dollars to proselytize children under the guise of public education. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Christian, or Scientologist—it would have opened the floodgates.

And yet, because this was a tie with no majority opinion, it leaves the door cracked open for future litigation. That should worry anyone who cares about the integrity of public education.

The 2016 NAACP Charter Moratorium: A Prescient Warning

Back in 2016, as part of the California NAACP, I helped lead the research and deliberations behind our controversial call for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools. The resolution did not call for an end to all charter schools—but it did call for a pause.

Why? Because we saw, through both national data and on-the-ground investigations, that far too many charter schools were operating with little accountability to the communities they served. We saw widespread inequities in enrollment practices, harsh discipline policies disproportionately affecting students of color, and a disturbing trend toward resegregation.

But perhaps most troubling was the rapid pace of charter expansion—often driven by well-funded private interests—without sufficient public oversight. We saw public school closures in Black and Brown communities justified by the need to “make room” for charters that weren’t actually delivering better outcomes.

We knew then that if left unchecked, the charter sector would become a vehicle not for innovation, but for privatization. What we did not anticipate was that it would also become a Trojan horse for theocratic influence.

The St. Isidore case proves how right we were to sound the alarm.

Charter School Segregation: A Legacy That Can No Longer Be Ignored

My own research on charter schools has consistently shown that they are more segregated than traditional public schools—by race, by class, and increasingly, by ideology.

In a national study I conducted using federal data, we found that charter schools are more likely than traditional public schools to be intensely segregated (meaning more than 90% of students from a single race or ethnicity). And in some urban areas, charter expansion has correlated with an increase in racial isolation, not integration.

This segregation is not incidental—it’s structural. Charter schools are often located in racially homogenous neighborhoods, lack meaningful transportation plans, and utilize admission processes that discourage diverse enrollment. And while some progressive charter leaders have tried to “design for diversity”, the overall trend is clear: we are heading backward, not forward.

Layering religion on top of this structure adds another dimension of division. If religious charter schools are allowed to flourish, we risk creating an even more fractured system—one where public funds support separate and unequal religious enclaves masquerading as public schools.

A Moment of Pause or a Prelude to Disaster?

Let’s not misunderstand the implications of the Supreme Court’s tie. This was not a win for public education—it was a stay of execution.

The conservative legal movement has been building toward this moment for years. Cases like Carson v. Makin and Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue have already eroded the distinction between public funding and religious schools. The St. Isidore case was meant to be the next domino.

And let’s be honest about what’s driving this movement. It’s political operatives, legal advocacy groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, and billionaire donors seeking to dismantle the public education system as we know it—piece by piece, case by case.

They are not just fighting for school choice—they are fighting to redefine what “public” means.

Holding the Line for Our Children’s Future

This is not a moment for neutrality. As a nation, we must decide: Will we preserve a system of public education that aspires—however imperfectly—to serve all children equally? Or will we allow it to be sliced, diced, and privatized into religious, racial, and ideological factions?

I still believe in the potential of public education. I believe in its power to be a common ground—a place where children from different backgrounds learn not just math and science, but how to live in a pluralistic society. That dream cannot survive if we allow taxpayer dollars to fund sectarian indoctrination.

And let’s not forget: this is not just a church-state issue—it’s a racial justice issue. When religious charter schools are approved without oversight, it is Black and Brown children who are most at risk of being pushed into segregated, under-resourced, and ideologically extreme environments. The danger is not theoretical. It is immediate and real.

What Comes Next?

This 4-4 tie should be a wake-up call for public education advocates, civil rights organizations, and concerned citizens across the country. It tells us that the fight is far from over—and that the next case may succeed where St. Isidore failed.

We need action on multiple fronts:

Legal resistance: We must support organizations that are prepared to litigate these cases aggressively. Groups like the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and others need our backing.

Legislative clarity: State legislatures must reinforce laws that uphold the Establishment Clause. They must reject the use of public funds for religious instruction—explicitly and unequivocally.

Community organizing: Local school boards, parent organizations, and educators must raise their voices against this creeping theocratization of education. The NAACP, NEA, and other grassroots organizations must mobilize now, not later.

Public awareness: We must educate our communities about what is at stake. This is not about opposing religion—it is about defending the constitutional promise of religious freedom through non-establishment.

Final Thoughts: What We Choose Now Will Echo Forward

In times of great tension, in times of moral challenge, silence is complicity. We cannot look back on this moment years from now and say we didn’t see it coming.

We are at the edge of a cliff. One more case, one more swing justice, and the wall separating church and state in public education could fall. And when it does, the fallout will be hardest on the most vulnerable among us.

As someone who once believed in the promise of charter schools, and who still believes in the promise of public education, I urge us all to hold the line.

Because if we let public education become private, if we let it become religious, if we let it become segregated—we will lose not just a system, but a vision of what democracy looks like for our children.

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Julian Vasquez Heilig serves as a Professor of Educational Leadership, Research, and Technology at Western Michigan University. His commitment to community extends to advisory roles in higher education, government, schools, foundations, civil rights organizations, and non-profits. As a leader in the NAACP, he served on the Executive Committee and as Education Chair for the Kentucky and California Hawai’i chapters, demonstrating dedication to civil rights and educational equity.

He holds a Ph.D. in educational administration and policy analysis and a master’s in sociology from Stanford University. He also holds a master’s in higher education and a bachelor’s in history and psychology from the University of Michigan.

Democrats for Education Reform, the front operation for billionaire privateering of public education, has gone all-in for right-wing policies. This likely reflects two factors: the collapse of DFER nationally, and an opportunistic pivot to Trump’s MAGA regime.

DFER was established upon the premise, according to its hedge fund co-founder Whitney Tilson, that it would spend lavishly as part of an “inside job” to turn the Democratic Party away from teachers unions and public education and toward charter schools. Its CEO Jorge Elorza has just announced the organization will race even further to the right: DFER will now “Explore innovative funding models such as education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and tax credit programs.” (emphasis in original). This is the program of billionaires Linda McMahon, Betsy DeVos–and Donald Trump.

Judging by the number of high-level staff fleeing from DFER, Elorza has been driving the operation into the ground. Jessical Giles, who served for six years as Washington, D.C. executive director recently resigned because DFER’s policies “no longer align with my values and vision.” 

Other DFER leaders have complained of the group’s gallop toward political extremism. In a complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, former Massachusetts executive director Mary Tamer wrote that Elorza retaliated against her for “inquiring about Mr. Elorza’s decision to join a Koch-funded right-wing coalition that seemed contrary to the organization’s best interests and mission.” The right-wing coalition seems to be the No More Lines Coalition, which includes not only Koch aligned organizations but Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Elorza has been a guest speaker at the Charles Koch Institute. Tamer is seeking damages against  DFER, and the allied Education Reform Now and Education Reform Now Advocacy for gender and age discrimination.

Tamer’s complaint alleges a number of defections by key DFER leaders. Within months of Elorza’s arrival COO Shakira Petit left, and CFO Sheri Adebiyi was fired. Board Chair Marlon Marshall and Charles Ledley, a co-founder, resigned. The complaint further alleges that “Ms. Tamer is one of several women in leadership positions who have been terminated or pushed out by the Defendants.” That list includes Connecticut state director Amy Dowell and Jen Walmer of Colorado, a close adviser on education to Governor Jared Polis and one of DFER’s most effective advocates.

Despite the name, DFER has raised millions over the years from Republican-backing billionaires. The Walton Family Foundation, the non-profit corporation of the notoriously anti-union family that owns WalMart, has sustained DFER. Rupert Murchoch, who regards K-12 education as a $500 billion market gave DFER at least $1 million, apparently in the hopes the operation would help his ed tech company. 

Elorza’s announcement of DFER’s shift leans on the “market-based solutions” language of neo-liberal privateering, but the reality is that neo-liberalism is not where the action is in 2025. Families for Excellent Schools, at one time a privateering powerhouse, collapsed in 2018. In 2011 Stand for Children president Jonah Edelman boasted his organization had nine state affiliates and would grow to twenty states by the end of 2015. In 2025 Stand for Children is hanging on in seven states. 

Since its 2007 founding, DFER has claimed chapters in nineteen different states plus D.C. and a teachers group. By February 2025 only four chapters remained. In January 2023, DFER listed thirteen national staffers. By February 2025, it had only four. As of May 2025, the “States” and “National Staff” links on DFER’s webpage have disappeared. An Elorza biography lives on. 

The action now is with extremist organizations like the Koch and Leonard Leo aligned Parents Defending Education and Heritage Foundation offspring Moms for Liberty. 

Self-described “school choice evangelist” Corey DeAngelis accurately sees that DFER has joined with the far right on education privateering.  DeAngelis was the face of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children  until he was fired after revelations he had starred in gay sex porn films. He is now a “senior fellow” at the American Culture Project, which is tied to the Koch network through the Franklin News Foundation. DeAngelis is cheering DFER’s embrace of the Republican education privateering platform. 

What has DFER really joined here? The end game was spelled out in a 2017 memorandum from the secretive Council for National Policy to Trump and DeVos: abandon public education in favor of “free-market private schools, church schools and home schools.” 

That is your “choice.” 

DFER has never been a membership organization—there are few real Democrats involved. To be sure, it has gotten donations from charter favoring Democratic billionaires as well as an array of Republican privateers, plus millions of dollars in untraceable dark money. DFER’s organizational drift and rank political opportunism have now cemented its bond with Trump’s MAGA regime.

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Maurice T. Cunningham is a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization (2021).

Our public schools are part of our democratic heritage. They belong to the public and must remain accountable to the public.

These lawmakers would never open charter schools in the places that they live. These are all experiments and band aid fixes.