Andre Perry

NEW ORLEANS — You can teach in ethical decision-making in schools, but ending violent crime in the city also requires a jobs program. New Orleans can celebrate a third straight year in which she saw a decline in the number of murders (150 in 2014) — Happy New Year! But hold off on the fireworks […]

NEW ORLEANS – Having charter schools vote as to whether or not they should return to the Orleans Parish School District confuses an already complicated educational landscape. After five years of academic and operational success, charter leaders can look for a bargain in leadership – meaning charter-governing boards can decide which authorizer (New Orleans School […]

Those who doubt whether slain Michael Brown deserved the movement that rallied behind his “questionable character” should look to the Jena Six’s Mychal Bell. Bell, whose perceived thuggish character also raised doubts about the legitimacy of a movement that defended him eight years ago, just received his college degree from Southern University. From an attempted […]

NEW ORLEANS – Organizing to solve deeper political problems requires much more effort than the finger pointing currently under way at the University of New Orleans. The schools’ Faculty Council issued a vote of no confidence for Peter Fos, its president, a week before the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors approved Fos’s plan to eliminate […]

NEW ORLEANS – It’s finals week at my daughter’s university, but in spite of her school’s calendar, I expect her to join the acts of civil disobedience blooming across the country. All students, especially those in high school and college, currently face the appearing choice of testing the curriculum of injustice (AKA institutional oppression) or […]

Who would have thought fourth grade could be so cruel. Ms. Gibbs’s class included many neighboring children who later would become lifelong friends. However, by the sounds of the “rip” sessions between subjects, during gym class or lunch you would have thought we were mortal enemies. Every day, I lived in fear that they would […]

NEW ORLEANS – School buildings in the Crescent City will become monuments to our differences instead of the beacons of learning they are supposed to be if New Orleanians reject a preservation program for educational facilities in the voting booth on Dec. 6. It’s a funding conflict that mirrors power disputes around the country over […]

NEW ORLEANS – Republicans are winning the support of black Americans. But don’t give the GOP too much credit. Democrats have themselves to thank. And poor, black schoolchildren have little to be thankful for at all. Through the rhetoric of “choice,” “competition,” and “accountability,” the education-reform clique of the Democratic Party have been campaigning for […]

NEW ORLEANS — Education reform minus a comprehensive sex-education platform is an incomplete agenda. What is more “Common Core” than sex and sexuality? But you never hear school leaders demand academic accountability around students’ sexual knowledge. Like it or not, school-aged students are still having sex. We should test what students know. Educators actually could, […]

Editor’s Note: Son of a Saint is a support group for boys whose fathers are incarcerated or dead. At the organization’s annual gala Nov. 1, Hechinger Report columnist Andre Perry delivered a keynote speech in which he revealed that as a child, he faced the same situation as the boys helped today by this group: […]