School Choice and the Empowerment Imperative

Abstract

Drawing from historical, sociological, and policy literatures, as well as legislative activity, this article traces the intellectual and political evolution of educational equity, beginning with progressive models of redistribution and remedy to more recent neoliberal forms, which privilege parental empowerment through the expansion of school choice. At the legislative and regulatory levels, policymakers have redefined equity in schooling to mean providing parents with sufficient school choices to “buy” education for their children. This framework recasts the role of the state as a broadening agent for educational markets. Although parental empowerment is seemingly a central goal of the legislation, the laws also facilitate the entry of private sector actors into the educational marketplace. The resulting choice options depart from redistributive forms of equity, advantage some parents over others, and also empower for-profit and nonprofit intermediaries and private providers seeking to gain a share of the educational marketplace.

Notes

Neoliberalism is an ideology that transcends political party and emphasizes smaller government, the creation of private markets to deliver public services, and an emphasis on individual liberties (Harvey, 2005).

This analysis is part of an ongoing, multiyear project first initiated in 2006 that maps elite and community-based school choice advocacy networks in terms of ideology, funding, and coalitional activity. The project draws from an extensive document review that includes Internal Revenue Service Form 990 reporting, board membership, legislation, website information, blogs and newspaper editorials, and organizational mission statements.

This scholarship does not conclude that racially homogenous schools were automatically inferior academically. Although segregated schools on the whole were underresourced by the state, communities were supportive of their local schools and many created educational environments that were culturally responsive, nurturing, and educationally rigorous (Walker, 1996). Moreover, desegregation plans were often flawed and/or poorly implemented, placing the burden on children of color to move to hostile environments, tracking children in low-status courses, and failing to ensure diversity in the teaching and administrative staff (Clotfelter, 2004; Patterson, 1997). Amidst these major shortcomings, there is also evidence of the benefits of integrated schooling. These include increased access to high-status curricula, shifts in racial attitudes, more interracial friendships, higher rates of college attendance, and a propensity to live in integrated neighborhoods as adults (Braddock, Crain, & McPartland, 1984; Braddock & McPartland, 1988; Linn & Welner, 2007; Wells & Crain, 1994, 1997).

Schools and districts generate private revenue through a number of mechanisms, including: fundraising by booster clubs, Parent Teacher Associations, Parent Teacher Organizations, local educational and school-based foundations, and volunteerism within schools and school districts.

See, for example, the testimony in Empowering Success (2001).

Issues in DFER's platform include (a) policies that stimulate the creation of new, accountable public schools and that simultaneously close down failing schools; (b) mechanisms that allow parents to select excellent schools for their children, and where education dollars follow each child to their school; (c) governance structures that hold leaders responsible while giving them the tools to effectuate change and empowering mayors to lead urban school districts; (d) policies that allow school principals and their school communities to select their teams of educators, granting them flexibility while holding them accountable for student performance; and (e) national standards and expectations for core subject areas, with flexibility for states and local districts to determine how best to meet them.