Indigenous Parents Navigating School Choice in Constrained Landscapes

ABSTRACT

Educational reform policies in the United States promote school choice as a central tool to empower low-income and minoritized families in order to close the achievement gap. However, research on school choice rarely reflects the voice of minoritized families and offers little evidence that choice significantly addresses inequities in educational outcomes. This article analyzes the perspectives of Indigenous parents as they navigate school choice options with their children in the southwestern U.S. Through the conceptual lens of enduring struggle and educational survivance, ethnographic data offers insight into factors significant for three families as they select schools from a highly constrained landscape. Deeper analysis of why Indigenous families reject and select schools reveals an educational landscape fraught with persisting inequities, in spite of choice. The continued silencing of issues relevant to Indigenous education, such as the impacts of colonization, tribal sovereignty, and rights to culturally responsive education marginalize Indigenous voices from the school choice debate. This study adds Indigenous voices to the school choice debate, and contributes new dimensions to parent choice behaviors. Implications support scholarly claims that current school choice policy masks the entrenched operations of race, class and deficit discourse which perpetuate unfavorable school outcomes for Indigenous youth.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Wilma, Nancy, and Victoria for sharing their thoughts, experiences, and time for this research. The author would also like to thank Brant Miller for his feedback on drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Minoritized is used to refer to groups and identities often referred to as “minority” groups. Minority status is a socially constructed concept, thus use of the term minoritized allows for emphasis on the contextualizing minoritization into social interaction and social structures.

² I use Indigenous, Native, Indian, and American Indian all to refer to peoples who predate European colonial contact. These terms are used interchangeably and reflect a diversity of ways individuals and communities self-identify.

³ School choice discourse is also seen to mask White flight, and undercut public investment and accountability for educational equity in the United States (see Fabricant & Fine, 2012).

⁴ Urban Native Middle School is a pseudonym. All individual names have been changed for pseudonyms to respect the privacy of those involved with this research. Additionally, all specific place names, such as cities, towns, and institutions, have been changed to protect privacy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vanessa Anthony-Stevens

Vanessa Anthony-Stevens is an Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Idaho. Her research focuses on preparing teachers for diversity in rural contexts and Indigenous negotiations of educational sovereignty in the US and Mexico.