OneApp, Many Considerations: Black Social Capital and School Choice in New Orleans

Abstract

This article employs critical policy theory to analyze the shift in the New Orleans school application system from a decentralized model to a common enrollment system. As many Black families continue to select historically Black schools rather than newly founded charters, free-market policymakers have portrayed them as irrational consumers who lack the social capital to choose good schools. Through a discourse analysis of research and media coverage, this article argues that the failure of parents to align their choices to free-market metrics is a rational manifestation of the Black social capital that has been disrupted by free-market reforms.

Keywords::

• educational policy
• race
• school choice
• social capital

About the Author

Alexios Rosario-Moore is a doctoral student in Urban Education Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago where his research focuses on college preparation in racially and economically isolated schools. He is a former faculty member at Xavier University of Louisiana and Academic Director of Bard Early College in New Orleans.

Notes

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Ibid.

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Ritea Steven, “Public Schools Compete for Kids,” The Times-Picayune (August 12, 2006).

Ibid.

Andrew Vanacore, “Board May Join Unified Signups—School Enrollment Complex in N.O.,” The Times-Picayune (June 20, 2012).

Ibid.

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Ibid.

Ibid.

http://educationresearchalliancenola.org/about (accessed April 17, 2015).

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Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

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Harris and Larsen, “What Schools Do Families Want (And Why)?”

Ibid.

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Glynn A. Hill, “Charter Schools Deaf to Marching Band Culture,” The New York Times: Student Journalism Institute, http://nola14.nytimes-institute.com/2014/05/29/charter-schools-marching-band-culture/.

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Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

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Ibid.

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Ibid.

Walter Stern, “The Negro’s Place: Schools, Race and the Making of Modern New Orleans, 1900–1960” (PhD dissertation, Tulane University, 2014).

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