Andre Perry is an activist, founding dean, professor, and award winning journalist in the field of education. He is currently a fellow at the Brooking Institution, focusing his research on race and structural inequality, economic inclusion, and education. He was the co-chair for education in New Orleans in 2010 and served on Louisiana Governor-elect John Bel Edwards’ K-12 education transition committee in 2015. Perry also founded the College of Urban Education at Davenport University, following his work as a professor at University of New Orleans and as the CEO of the Capital One-University of New Orleans Charter Network.
BPR: How do you change the paternalistic structure of education reform to allow community members, specifically communities of color, to be involved in the creation of education reform rather than solely being told to implement a new policy?
Andre Perry: First of all, any problem that is local requires a local solution. Just to put it in a different context, if I walked into a Kentucky Community Center and said “Hey you need to change all of this because my research in Washington said so.” The people in Kentucky would kick me out of the building. With local communities, our worlds are so separate that you have people next door who are completely foreign to the communities they are trying to help. You also have to trust that people will have solutions or have the ability to implement solutions. A lot of what we see in education reform is a lack of trust of black people and it’s because black people have been devalued due to racism. For me, yes we need education reform, but the goal has always been how do we involve local communities in their own recovery. It starts first by investing in local organizations and knowing that you’re building capacity for change by doing so. I think you might consider local folk and local institutions as part of the problem but they are undeniably part of the solution.
BPR: How do these black reforms groups break through so that they are able to represent the public?
AP: When folks are given large sums of money to influence change, they often say that these black led organizations don’t have the capacity to handle money well. However, if you never trust someone with dollars, you never build capacity. And we’re quick to give young, white folks money to start businesses and schools, but when it comes to black folks that type of enthusiasm doesn’t follow through. Racism taints our ability to see who we invest in and black institutions, black school board, black schools are treated like black people. Until black people matter, it’s going to be hard for these organizations to invest in the institutions and people that can implement change in those communities.
BPR: You also discuss the other side of the argument: how reform in communities of color elicits charges of “acting white” from black communities. How does this mindset change from these community members looking at these organizations?
AP: When you’re working with communities the sign is that you are empowering them. People don’t typically complain when leadership on the ground is empowering. They complain (and rightfully so) when their jobs are being taken and other organizations are being enriched, especially when they have their own organizations that can do the work. You don’t want to do reform to people; the sign that you’re doing it with them is that organizations on the ground are being empowered, growing, getting stronger, getting resources, and mobilizing people. A lot of people want community engagement, but let’s think through that word. When you’re a member of a community, you don’t need community engagement because you’re part of the community. A lot of white organizations want to engage the community, they don’t want to be a part of the community – they want to leave and that’s not the kind of membership building and capacity building communities need.
BPR: How do we export enough homegrown teachers in order to keep education local as the respect of the teaching profession has decreased in recent years?
AP: It’s not necessarily about recruiting teachers, it’s about making [strong] contingents so people don’t want to leave. Our goal should always be to strengthen cities and to make the conditions in the schools as workable as possible. There is nothing inherently wrong with white teachers in terms of their race, but black teachers generally have expectations that are conducive for lower suspension expulsion rate and higher academic performance. The top recruitment strategy for teachers is having a good school experience as a kid and too many black children have horrible times in school because of disciplinary policies, low expectations, and lack the opportunities provided to white, middle class children.
BPR: Do you think that the switch to charter schools in New Orleans following Katrina was necessary and the right decision? Does this influence how you think about charter schools in other urban areas?
AP: Well I think a change in governance structure has never been a solvent. You could make a case in New Orleans that it was easier to open schools as charters but you didn’t necessarily need to expand charter schools to do that. I think the problems with education is not the governance, it’s school district setups in which low income areas are not getting the resources they need, the education of special needs children, the expulsion and suspension problem – these are problems that transcend and continue in the charter environment. So I don’t think it was necessary, I think it was a way, there are lots of ways, but it wasn’t necessary. The consequences of that decision, is that many cities try and create a man made storm to upend districts in ways so that they can charter everything. Using storms and other catastrophes as a way to wedge in a [charter] agenda is irresponsible, hurtful, spiteful, and ineffective.
BPR: Can you please elaborate a little more on your recommendation to pay tuition for a four-year state college for the formerly incarcerated in an effort to make reparations for missed opportunities?
AP: We’ve robbed millions of children from the best college education they can get because of a criminal justice system that is tilted against black and brown people. We [should] move merit based scholarships away from upper income people and give them to low income students as a form of retribution. People who are incarcerated and their families have lower income and fewer chances at a college degree. We should be adding points to test scores of people who have been victimized by the criminal justice system and adding dollars to the scholarship amounts to the children of the incarcerated and the incarcerated. White folks benefitted from the over-incarceration of black people because it reduced the competitive environment to get a college degree. They’ve benefitted for decades and benefits will show up for decades. The least we can do is now pay that privilege forward and give the children of the incarcerated and the incarcerated college scholarships.
BPR: If you were Secretary of Education, replacing Betsy Devos, what would be the first policy change you would make?
AP: Given the new report of suspension expulsion, I would go on the enforcement end and enlarge our office of civil rights division in the department. When states don’t follow the principles of the law, someone must hold them accountable, especially as our history shows we should not trust states in delivering equity to black and brown children. There is no evidence that states will ensure that black and brown children are getting a quality education and so the federal government should play the role in having somnnnnne type of accountability system in place to discourage bad actors in the states.