Practising citizenship in new spaces: Rights and realities of charter school activism

Abstract.

In the past two decades, the role of the state and the role of the citizen have changed in public education in the US. In order to give parents the ‘right to choose’ their children's schools, federal, state and district-level legislation has enabled experimental forms of education and new kinds of schools to be funded with public money. The legal framework guiding the charter school movement gives the citizenry the ‘right’ to design and manage charter schools with taxpayers' dollars. This neo-liberal turn in public education provides the potential for unprecedented participation by citizens in the public school system. This paper explores the legislative changes at a variety of scales that have essentially reconstructed the possibilities for and meaning of citizenship for many parents and community members. The creation of a charter school in the Grant Park neighbourhood of Atlanta, Georgia, offers a look at the new volunteer subject-citizens who operate in increasingly privatised public schools. The ability of individuals to participate in voluntary, privately managed institutions such as charter schools is contingent on having the social, cultural and economic resources to do so. Furthermore, the scale at which these citizens act is localised, highlighting the local, neighbourhood scale as the most salient for citizen participation. The role of private groups in public institutions such as charter schools raises questions about the degree to which these new spaces advance social justice in light of changes in the state's delivery of public services.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Hilda Kurtz, Ronan Paddison and three anonymous referees for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. In addition, thanks to Deb Martin and Sallie Marston for conceptual guidance throughout my research process.

Notes

1. Citizenship does not have to be practised by legal citizens; rather, it is the performance of citizenship rights and obligations—not the legal standing of citizens—that gives meaning to the practice of social citizenship. Clark (1994), for instance, examines the case of residents living in housing co-operatives who build on a multiplicity of identities of gender, race and ‘lifeworlds’ to form social networks in which they assert and practise their citizenship rights in order to maintain control of their housing co-operatives. Pincetl (1994), on the other hand, explores the practice of citizenship by non-citizens. She examines three cases of undocumented Latino workers organising and protesting for workers' rights in Los Angeles. Her work refines the definition of the practice of citizenship to include the performance of citizenship identity by individuals who are not granted formal political citizenship rights. Nonetheless, they seek social citizenship rights in the sphere of work, addressing pay and work conditions.

2. Although charter schools operate outside the traditional public school framework, they remain subject to federal laws.

3. A school's charter may be terminated if the school fails to implement its terms or if there is “the existence of competent substantial evidence that the continued operation of the charter school would be contrary to the best interests of the students or the community” (Atlanta Public Schools Charter School Application, 2002). This termination clause suggests that Atlanta Public Schools maintains significant power over charter schools, in that nowhere is “competent substantial evidence” for terminating a charter defined.

4. According to the US Census Bureau, the City of Atlanta, with approximately 417 000 residents, is 34 per cent White, 62 per cent African American, 2 per cent Asian and the remainder of mixed race.

5. These are projected for fiscal year 2004, as of 29 April 2004, the most recent figures available.

6. This is almost $2 000 more per pupil than Atlanta Public Schools spent the same year ($9 417 per student).

7. The school had 105 students enrolled during the 2002–03 school year.

8. Special qualifications are not necessary, but parents' talents, such as language abilities, are utilised in classrooms if parents agree.

9. She stated that 1 500 hours is a very conservative estimate of how much time parents actually spent volunteering, as parents often did not sign in when they spent time at the school—nor were the hours that went into major fund-raising events counted in the log.

10. I tried repeatedly to contact PTA board members (besides the past and current PTA president) to get a more detailed sense of the kinds of activities and volunteer time that went into the school, but my phone calls and emails were not returned.

11. This compares to twenty percent eligibility for free/reduced lunch at the Neighborhood Charter School.

12. See Hankins (2004) for a more complex discussion of the ways in which neighbourhood and community were invoked in legislation and practised among charter school activists.