The Three Languages of School Choice: A Narrative Policy Framework Toward Better Conversations About Education Freedom

Abstract

Discourse around school choice often is divisive. Less understood is the effect polarization has within advocate groups. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) approach offers a systematic approach to understanding how political actors use narratives to affect policy debates. Because NPF assumes bounded relativity, the approach requires a theory of political ideology that can explain why narratives stick within certain ideological boundaries. Because Kling’s three-axes model provides non-mutually exclusive character identification, it can help illuminate in-group overlap and conflict. This essay uses NPF and Kling to examine how narratives are used by various subgroups within the school choice advocacy coalition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Another tactic identified by Nie (2003), though outside the scope of this study’s focus on a narrative’s characters, is the use of scientific disagreement. For instance, if a minority policy narrative can dispute the essential facts founding the majority narrative’s story, it can disrupt the setting that holds that majority narrative together. Alternatively, a majority narrative could utilize science in a way that distances itself from moral responsibility for creating victims. One potential example of the different ways narratives use science to change disrupt the other’s settings is gender identity. Conservatives may appeal to a traditional scientific reality that acknowledges two genders arising from two sexes, while progressives will appeal to contemporary science that provides accounts for how gender and sex may well be distinct.

2. In an updated edition to The Three Languages of Politics (2017), Kling notes that the rise of Donald Trump in the United States may demand a fourth axis for his model to encompass the populist ideology. Kling suggests this axis heroizes “real Americans,” who tend to be working class people in rural areas and small towns. This axis villainizes the “elites,” who are detached from reality and needlessly make life harder through their hifalutin ideas. Kling acknowledges that the reality of this axis complicates his model substantially because his initial three axes all fall under the “elite” camp villainized by the populists.

3. That the family is the “building block of society” is an idea attributed to Pope John Paul II and popularized by selfidentified conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Acton Institute.

4. Arguably, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, may be one of the better examples of a person who has frequently been villainized in ways consistent with all three languages of school choice.

5. All information about this gubernatorial debate has been collected from the recorded video, published by C-SPAN (2021).