ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the phenomenon of parent engagement as it has developed in post-Katrina New Orleans and analyzes this risk and potential in how the white middle class is engaging in the institution of public education. The charter schools were quickly developed as the solution to improving schooling in New Orleans, which would eventually result in a city with 91" of students in charter schools by 2012, operating under the valence of public schooling but run by nonprofit, private entities. The parents and community members that led the effort to create the Plessy School in New Orleans sought to form a new school that reflected the diversity and history of the downtown neighborhoods of Marigny, Bywater, St. Roch, and St. Claude. Just as years of racial, economic, and social history is mapped onto the geography of New Orleans, the move toward a universal choice system in the city takes place on contested geographic terrain.
