The Orleans Public Education Network is a non-profit organization committed to ensuring public engagement as a central element to building excellent public schools. Public education is the domain of an engaged and informed public. OPEN exists to serve as a catalyst and conduit for broad and diverse community engagement by facilitating more collaboration between community members, stakeholders, and policy makers. Our goal is to ensure every child in New Orleans has access to a quality public school and give all citizens the opportunity to participate in the process of how schools operate in Orleans Parish.
The Orleans Public Education Network was created in late 2007 when several groups, Committee for a Better New Orleans, Greater New Orleans Education Foundation, Urban League of Greater New Orleans, Children’s Defense Fund, and Louisiana Justice Institute began discussing the depleted conditions of the New Orleans public school district. In the process, the groups confronted deep-seated distrust and historical race and class tensions, as representatives of broad array of interests: students and their parents, the business sector, proponents and opponents of the charter school model, academics and community advocates, funders and school administrators, and representatives of the black and white communities. These groups came together around a common conversation to discuss what could be done to establish a sustainable and effective education reform movement. The consensus-building process was an integral step in the congealing of the collaborative. In this process OPEN members realized sustainable reform requires the engagement of a broad and diverse citizenry. OPEN determined the central aim of its work would be serving as a catalyst for civic capacity in public education.
OPEN’s work began by listening to the New Orleans Community. In 2009, almost four years into New Orleans transformed landscape, OPEN recognized there was not a “pulse” on the public sentiment. How was the community experiencing the new landscape? In an effort to help inform and guide its work OPEN launched a citywide listening project (Participatory Research Project). The groundwork was laid in 2009 to gather information from a wide and diverse section of citizens in order to understand the concerns of the community on public education. By early 2010, facilitators had conducted surveys, interviews, and focus groups throughout the community which incorporated the voices of almost 600 people. These efforts resulted in a participatory research statement which identified key concerns and issue areas which would lay the groundwork for OPEN’s ONE STEP Campaign. The listening project gave OPEN a unique lens into public sentiment examining not only what the communities thoughts were but also identifying critical contributors, “why” those perceptions are held. OPEN leveraged its learnings to inform its historic ONE STEP Campaign. (link to One Step site).
In response to growing concerns on how to identify successful or emergent schools, OPEN committed to host its “What Works and Why” series in 2010, which identified best practices in New Orleans Schools. One outcome of this series was the “Correlates of Effective Practice” document produced by OPEN, which identified commonalities in successful New Orleans schools. Later, OPEN’s “Governance Series” sought to present the various models being proposed by local and national research leaders in the field of education reform for the New Orleans community.
OPEN’s most recent effort, the One Step Campaign, builds upon the work of the Participatory Research Project to focus more in-depth on the key topics to New Orleans public education that were identified by the community. Each month, the One Step Campaign focuses on a new topic, combining small community working groups with best practice panel events to provide more venues and opportunities for informed dialogue. Ultimately, the One Step Campaign will produce a community generated set of recommendations for public education reform in Orleans Parish to be presented to policymakers.
Today, OPEN is a growing collaborative of individuals and groups committed to serving as a catalyst for broad and diverse community engagement in shaping the future of public education.
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