Introduction

“I agree that every parent should do his/her best to take the very best care possible in making decisions for their children… to that end, I’d look to others…” writes a parent of an LGBT child on a city message board. In fact, a number of parents of LGBT children feel similarly in knowing that their family has particular needs and seeks out advice as to how to address them. One of the most pressing challenges faced by LGBT students is finding a school that is supportive and affirming of their gender and sexual identities. In this paper, I aim to expand the literature on school choice to incorporate LGBT friendly climate as a new measure for how families assess choosing homes and schools. On what basis do families with LGBT students identify desirable schools? How does their mobility affect how they change them? Through the use of online forums and message boards, I first argue that families looking to choose a school seeks out concrete LGBT resources and visibility of LGBT community members, both in their schools and in their neighborhoods. Second, I find that the types of schools that best present these resources are often understood differently by parents and students. Finally, I explore several issues that limit mobility of families to identify and choose schools that are LGBT friendly. The impact of this paper, then, is to open the door for future research on families with LGBT students and choosing schools to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the school choice process.

Literature review

School choice has risen in the past decade due to an increased emphasis by education reformers on charter schools, magnet schools and school vouchers (Goldring and Phillips 2008). As a result, the literature on school choice has grown considerably in recent years. A large subset of this literature places emphasis on how families choose schools — by deciding on particular neighborhoods to live, whether to participate in a public school district, and, if in a choice system, which schools within the system to choose. Academic achievement is extremely influential in helping families decide which schools are most desirable (Goldhaber 1999; Hastings and Weinstein 2007). Perhaps linked to academic achievement, but certainly a factor in its own right, racial and class inequality is also plays a considerable role in how families understand school choice (Holme 2002; Goyette 2008; Lareau and Goyette 2014). In this regard, the racial and socioeconomic climate of a school has been lightly studied as a factor for choosing schools (Ball, Bowe and Gewirtz 1996). However, very little work has been conducted on how other inequalities in schools — particularly on the basis of gender and sexual identity — and how they affect families’ understandings of what makes a desirable school. In short, the school choice literature doesn’t acknowledge how pursuing safe climate for LGBTQ students affects families’ choice of schools.

It is well-established that safe climates LGBTQ people are incredibly diverse and unequal, especially within the sphere of housing and neighborhood. The gay neighborhood is perhaps the most significant place for socialization amongst queer residents of a city (Chauncey 1994; Knopp 1997). The purpose for a gay enclave was in response to a historical intolerance for gay lifestyles; many found it necessary to congregate as a means of living in a safe community that would allow for the exploration of the social and political dimensions of gay life. Castells (1983) research on the Castro district, a gay neighborhood in San Francisco, argues that queer residents began a gentrification process as they moved into the neighborhood, thereby displacing working- class residents of the district. The upper-class gays who lived in the area made large financial and personal sacrifices in exchange for a safe social space for the development of their personal and political identities. This process of upper-class gay gentrification and inevitable displacement of lower-income residents became a national urban phenomenon (Lauria and Knopp, 1985). Such migration is likely not available to many queer residents in lower classes, which has limited their opportunity to socialize in gay neighborhoods. (Knopp, 1997; Barrett and Pollack 2005). Some scholars argue that the need for a closed gay neighborhood is no longer a necessary component of gay life. However, the demographics of queer acceptance (Bowman and O’Keefe 2004) prove that major metropolises and resort communities — typically expensive areas — are most tolerant of diversity in sexual identity. The financial freedom in migrating to more accepting locations and locating housing accepting of different lifestyles further advantages middle- and upper-class queer populations and motivates them to develop a social and political queer identity in the neighborhood. Not only is there a need for supportive spaces in neighborhoods, but the mobility that these accommodations require falls along class lines.

As an extension of the residential areas that support the development of queer identity, LGBTQ students have particular needs and face particular challenges within schools. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)’s 2013 School Climate Survey reports that 55.5% of LGBT students do not feel safe at their schools as a result of their sexual identity, and 37.8% because of their gender identity. Three quarters of LGBT students have faced verbal harassment within that calendar year, and over half reported the existence of LGBT-related discriminatory policies at their schools. Safe and affirming environments have been shown to affect educational outcomes: LGBT students show lower academic achievement than their counterparts as a result of missing school to avoid harassment, being less likely to pursue higher education, and reporting higher levels of depression (Nieto 1992; GLSEN 2013).

Different characteristics of schools show patterns of addressing these challenges differently. LGBT students are less likely to encounter verbal harassment in private, non-religious schools than they are in public schools or religious schools. LGBT students in public schools are more often victims of harassment based on their gender and sexual identities and are also less likely to have access to LGBT resources than their counterparts in private schools (religious or otherwise). These trends are exacerbated in the South and Midwest, especially in rural areas where choice systems are less prevalent (GLSEN 2013).

Though it has been established that many LGBT students experience marginalization in schools that affects the quality of their education, it is unclear whether all students have the access to mobility that they may require to seek out a supportive school climate. This paper, then, aims to unpack the ways in which families with LGBT students understand school choice. In it, I pay special attention to conversations that assume mobility. I focus on conversations driven by families who are moving or switching schools or neighborhoods as a direct result of having an LGBT student. How do these families with mobility imagine school choice? What do these families look for in choosing neighborhoods and schools for LGBT children?

Research design

This study uses online forum posts to understand how families with LGBTQ students understand school choice. The rise of the Internet has enabled families to conduct more thorough research from various sources about neighborhoods, districts, schools and even specific teachers (Weininger 2014). While a great body of literature is dedicated to how parents use the Internet to access official data published online by school districts and state agencies, little attention has been paid to conversations among families that exchange experiences and reputations of particular neighborhoods and schools. In this way, the Internet increases families’ access to networks of other families with similar interests in locating schools that meet the educational needs of their LGBTQ students.

Two message boards were used in this study. One forum, city-data.com, describes itself as focused specifically on conversations around cities, where “subjects range from relocation and city descriptions to hobbies and parenting” (City Data). The message board’s 1.5 million members write up to 15,000 new posts per day. The posts analyzed from this forum are all from parents and guardians of LGBTQ students. The other forum used, emptyclosets.com, aims to create “a safe online community for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people coming out” (Empty Closets). Its 70,000 members have written almost 3 million posts in over 200,000 threads, the majority of which are sorted into a sub-forum devoted to for support and advice. Mostly LGBT youth comprise its online community.

In searching for posts to consider for this study, three criteria are used. First, the post has to be written by a family member of any sexual orientation seeking advice for a child who identified as LGBT. Second, the thread must place an emphasis around schools and the possibility of choosing neighborhoods or specific schools for LGBT students. Finally, the original post of the thread must be explicitly seeking advice, either as to how to choose schools or which schools were most fitting for the students’ educational needs.

Data

A breakdown of the data sources for this analysis appears below.

The forum data used is available here.

Once the data was collected, it was coded for four different themes:

1. Resources and visibility in schools
2. Resources and visibility in neighborhoods
3. School type (neighborhood, magnet/charter, private)
4. Class concerns and limitations

Analysis

Resources and visibility in schools

When giving or seeking advice for how to ensure safe educational environments for LGBT students, families often turned to the resources, reputation and visibility of certain schools and districts in particular. We see this in the number of posts that offer suggestions of schools that offer a Gay-Straight Alliance or other safe school organization:

poppydog: … the link to the high school Gay/Straight group I posted is for the whole of the Triangle… Apex (Raleigh suburb) has a strong Gay/Straight Alliance, too. Here’s a video they made [link to video].

ferrickhead28: You can also call up local high schools and ask if they have a LGBT [sic] organization within their school.

Such posts are indicative of a larger trend — desirability of a specific space within the school that was designated for LGBT students and their allies. It is important to note here that having a Gay-Straight Alliance does not necessarily speak to the general school climate, but rather to the will of a select group of students and teachers in the school to create a safe space within the school. It is possible that such an organization does not have the support of the majority of the school community, but thrives on the backs of a small group of marginalized students who are able to connect in spite of their discomfort or unsafely in the rest of the school environment. Still, though, this was the most mentioned resource for families to measure whether their students would be safe at their schools. I attribute this frequency to the ease and comfort in such organizations serving as as concrete assurances that there is at least some space in which a student can feel safe at their school.

Posters also sought out explicit affirmation of school diversity initiatives as a concrete measure of school safety for LGBT students.

Zen_master: Columbus Academy at one point prominently hosted on their website a mission statement to be inclusive of all walks of life and made a specific mention of LGBT. [link to school page]

As a whole, parents took seriously the formal, institutional structures in place to ensure a safe environment for their children. The greatest resource a parent could feel assured of before sending an LGBT student to a new school, it seems, was an explicit commitment to diversity and affirming space at the school. Whether that took the form of enabling organizational space or directly messaging a promise to encouraging diversity, forum members found it most desirable for schools to have openly endorsed their families’ needs.

Within the larger school community, posters also found visibility of LGBT community members in schools to be an important resource for LGBT students. Some made mention of anecdotes of students’ positive experiences in schools (“I know someone who is openly gay and graduated from a Raleigh high school… and he says he had plenty of friends”), while others offer suggestions of schools where LGBT faculty and administration were prominent (“I went to Indianola Informal K-8… the principal is a gay man”). The acceptance of LGBT community leaders gave posters confidence that LGBT students will also be accepted, and perhaps even nurtured, at their schools.

Resources and visibility in schools

Some forum members showed skepticism that families could determine which schools had LGBT friendly climates without looking at the geography of the school.

no kudzu: I don’t know how anyone can choose a gay friendly school. Remember the turn over is high and different groups and in “leadership”. But I would guess that schools reflect what is going on in the community and that would be the best indicator.

Many parents felt similarly, and turned to resources in the neighborhood community to gauge whether schools would be safe for their students. Perhaps the most mentioned characteristic of a desirable neighborhood was degree of LGBT visibility within the area. This could take the form of electing a gay mayor or hosting an LGBT event (such as a pride parade or film festival). Also seen as desirable was whether the neighborhood carried the reputation of serving many LGBT couples with children.

ohioaninsc: You’d probably want to find out what schools serves Victorian Village or German Village…being that these neighborhoods have a higher concentration of LGBT couples, they are bound to have some children in the schools.

jbcmh81: Clintonville has a fairly sizable lesbian population. That might be reflected in the schools around it.

Closeness to a university or living in a college town played favorably among parents of LGBT children, as well. This was found to be beneficial in two ways: first, parents imagined the university’s resources would be accessible to high school students, as well. In a thread about moving to Columbia, South Carolina — home of the University of South Carolina — one poster surmised that students would be able to find “some LGBTQ resources at USC that may trickle down to the high schools.” Second, parents interpreted the highly-educated demographic of college professors and graduate students to be more accepting of LGBT students. In a thread about moving to North Carolina, a message board user wrote that “the large [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] professor[s’] children population and general influence really keeps students more open.” In both cases, parents presupposed that the university would be an accepting environment with LGBT friendly climates of their own, and that the influence of these spaces would find their way into the area’s public schools.

Finally, parents also looked for neighborhood resources not connected to schools at all to supplement the possibility of school-based resources and an accepting school climate. Parents researched youth organizations and found local support groups and organizations helpful to their search for where to send their children to school. Solely the existence of one LGBT center was a helpful assurance for one family:

poppydog: I don’t know that much about Columbia’s LGBTQ environment, but the Harriet Hancock Center looks like an awesome resource.

Though these resources were not explicitly imagined as affecting school climate, they were seen as desirable to families with LGBT students — perhaps in the hope that if schools were not able to provide a safe space for students, there would be support in other places for them.

School type

While the majority of message board conversations around switching schools dealt with the zoned neighborhood school, perceptions of public choice systems and private schooling were also crucial to understanding families’ choice of neighborhood and school.

A widespread assumption of magnet and charter schools was their marketed demographic of students who were unhappy in public schools. This often lead to referring to charter and magnet schools as more accepting of students from diverse backgrounds and needs:

poppydog: I know my kids’ charter is very accepting of “different” kids and while your child is liable to experience negative behavior by others to some degree wherever they go, some place like my kids’ school where there’s a small student body and several “out” kids and many geek culture kids might work, too.

Other charter and magnet schools were seen as having climates where “anyone can fit in” or have “a more personal approach with each student.” The smallness and subsequent personalization of these alternative schools, matched with their perception as having more kids who do not socialize well into mainstream schools, made these schools more desirable to parents with LGBT children.

The students themselves, however, had a much more diverse set of perspectives on the value of neighborhood schools, choice schools, and private schools. The perception of many of these students was that public schools, by virtue of their size, were most likely to have some safe space for LGBT students:

Doreibo: in a [neighborhood] public school you can probably find heaps of people who you can associate with. The good thing about the public schools is the variety of students and the openness of it all.

Here, a student at a small private school argues that students are more likely to carve out a niche for themselves at a large school with many different groups of students as opposed to a small, more personalized environment. Other students agreed that “there are tonnes of people who you can associate with, [and] the variety would be beneficial—” forum members felt that at public schools “you will bet a better objective education, exposure to the real world with a much better diversity of population and probably better programs.” This demonstrates a tension between parents’ and students’ faith in the possibility of an entire school being accepting. From the parents’ perspective, a smaller community with more personalization is likely to be accepting and make an LGBT student feel comfortable. Meanwhile, LGBT students on the message board showed their skepticism that small schools could be supportive because they didn’t allow for diversity (which they understood as fragmentation of the student body by interest or background).

Class concerns and limitations

Despite what families found desirable about their schools, they also ran into obstacles achieving their ideal school environments. Many of these issues of limited mobility were rooted in social class. A series of limitations by virtue of class background were demonstrated by forum member kromburner, a lower- to middle-class father trying to move to a district where his gay son would be accepted.

In deciding between two urban metro areas in the Southeast, the user admitted his worry that he and his wife were worried about “snootiness” in one of the wealthy suburbs and inquired about “which area would be best for ‘commoners’ of average means.” Here, the poster found themselves pulled in two different directions — the culture of the most desirable LGBT friendly schools are in wealthy suburbs, yet his family is reluctant to assimilate into the upper-class neighborhood that would provide such an opportunity. Other posters were supportive of this tension, and yet pushed him to reconcile his cultural apprehensions for the sake of his child’s education.

kromburner’s situation also revealed the sacrifices that many families need to make in order to . Since the area he hopes to move to has “a very tourist-oriented economy … and not many jobs,” both parents are forced maintain their current employment and commute as many as three hours each way to work. Some posters made suggestions of other cities and neighborhoods that would fit kromburner’s child’s needs, but he eventually turns them down because they would were further than three hours away from his job. Other parents suggested bringing the son to the schools for visits and “spending quite a bit of time in the high schools—” a task that is not possible for families with rigid work schedules. The large burden placed on families to negotiate locations and schedules of work and school poses a serious threat to mobility. In all, the limitations placed on kromburner are ones faced and understood by many parents who know what positive school climates are possible to some LGBT children, but not necessarily their own. The class-based reasons for these obstacles provide a considerable limitation to how families understand school choice — in some cases, identifying a safe school is not immediately followed by choosing a safe school.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have used online message boards to understand how families with LGBT students understand and navigate choosing homes and schools on the basis of school climate. I have analyzed the ways in which families look for resources and visibility from their schools and neighborhoods alike, as well as presented tensions between parents and students in their understandings of how schools can meet their particular educational needs. Finally, I have begun an exploration of how families are limited by the school choice process.

As the first paper to assess how families with LGBT students understand school choice, there are obvious limitations to the extent of its applicability. It is important to recognize the sample population as not very diverse. All data took place on two online forums, reserved for those who have regular access to the Internet with enough time for casual networking on message boards. The threads sampled involved families who were undergoing the choice process midway through their children’s educational journeys, requiring at least some degree of mobility as a prerequisite; there was no representation of families who had no mobility whatsoever. The means by which the data was collected meant that no demographic data was collected to understand clearly how race, class and geography plays a role in these conversations.

From here, I call for more research on this topic in venues beyond the online forum. It is only once we collect more data that is inaccessible via these online spaces that we can fully understand the school choice process for families with LGBT students.

[3665 words]

References

LGBTQ Education Guide: Your Rights as an LGBTQ Student in a NYC Public School.2014. Advocates for Children of New York.

Ball, Stephen J., Richard Bowe and Sharon Gewirtz. 1996. “School Choice, Social Class and Distinction: The Realization of Social Advantage in Education.” Journal of Education Policy 11(1):89-112.

Barrett, Donald C. and Lance M. Pollack. 2005. “Whose Gay Community? Social Class, Sexual self‐expression, and Gay Community Involvement.” The Sociological Quarterly 46(3):437-456.

Biegel, Stuart and Sheila J. Kuehl. 2010. “Safe at School: Addressing the School Environment and LGBT Safety through Policy and Legislation.”.

Bowman, Karlyn and Bryan O’Keefe. 2004. Attitudes about Homosexuality & Gay Marriage.American Enterprise Institute.

Castells, Manuel. 1983. The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements.Univ of California Press.

Chauncey, George. 1994. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940.Basic Books.

Goldhaber, Dan D. 1999. “School Choice: An Examination of the Empirical Evidence on Achievement, Parental Decision Making, and Equity.” Educational Researcher 28(9):16-25.

Goldring, Ellen B. and Kristie J. Phillips. 2008. “Parent Preferences and Parent Choices: The public–private Decision about School Choice.” Journal of Education Policy 23(3):209-230.

Goyette, Kimberly A. 2008. “Race, Social Background, and School Choice Options 1.” Equity & Excellence in Education 41(1):114-129.

Hastings, Justine S. and Jeffrey M. Weinstein. 2007. Information, School Choice, and Academic Achievement: Evidence from Two Experiments.

Knopp, Lawrence. 1997. “Gentrification and Gay Neighborhood Formation in New Orleans.” Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life:45-59.

Kosciw, Joseph G. and Elizabeth M. Diaz. 2008. Involved, Invisible, Ignored: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Parents and their Children in our Nation’s K-12 Schools.ERIC.

Kosciw, Joseph G., Emily A. Greytak, Mark J. Bartkiewicz, Madelyn J. Boesen and Neal A. Palmer. 2014. The 2013 National School Climate Survey: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth in our Nation’s Schools. ERIC.

Lareau, Annette and Kimberly Goyette. 2014. Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools.Russell Sage Foundation.

Lauria, Mickey and Lawrence Knopp. 1985. “Toward an Analysis of the Role of Gay Communities in the Urban Renaissance.” Urban Geography 6(2):152-169.

Nieto, Sonia. 1992. Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education.ERIC.

Rudi-Ann Miller

Professor Mira Debs

EDST 240: Cities, Suburbs and School Choice

6 May 2016

Introduction

With 438 institutions, the New York City public high school system is advertised as offering its students “more high school options than students living in any other city in the country” (New York City High School Directory, 1). However, that choice seems limited with over 80,000 students vying for spots in a select number of satisfactory schools (Introduction to High School Admissions Summer Workshop Packet, 6). As choice spurs competition among students, the process results in unequal outcomes depending on their access to information which is often correlated with race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Such disparities are particularly evident in the process for admittance to the city’s eight specialized high schools. Specialized high schools are elite educational institutions that are among the highest performing in the city. Admissions to these schools for “the academically gifted” are determined solely by the results of an entrance exam (“Specialized High Schools”). Despite the implied meritocratic nature of a test, the schools’ compositions–mainly Asian and white in a school system that is predominantly Latino and Black–suggests to many critics that the exam may be biased against minority students. While the homogeneity of specialized high schools can be attributed to many other factors including implicit bias in supposedly neutral entrance examinations and residential segregation, I believe that the least difficult problem to address is the information gap that exists between families at the opposite polarities of the socioeconomic scale. Successful school choice requires parents and families to have knowledge and agency in making decisions for their children. Information on high schools and the admissions process should be available to all families, and there must be a system-wide effort to help parents understand and utilize the information in the same way. This paper will suggest a method for incorporating equitable marketing New York City Public High Schools to Black and Latino families that will both improve outcomes in the high school selection and admissions process.

The New York City High School Choice Process

Although systems of school choice are imagined as tools for eliminating school segregation, the New York City public high school choice system that was redesigned in 2003 was not created with diversity in mind (Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, & Roth). Instead, it was constructed to ease the congestion of the original choice process, and the failure to address information gaps that exist in low-income minority communities has only reinforced and reproduced segregation by race and class in high schools. Prior to 2003, students applied to up to five schools, and the schools themselves determined which applicants they would accept. The result was “a congested market” in which a small number of high-performing students received multiple offers, thus having an actual choice while nearly half of the applicants–many of them lower-performing students from low-income families– received no offers (Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, & Roth). These applicants would then be required to wait to be placed in the summer in the second round of matching. Many would be admitted to schools they did not rank, which tended to be lower performing than the students desired. Another negative facet of this old system was that sought-after schools often only accepted applicants who had ranked them as their first choice. Thus, students who made more ambitious choices and were rejected would then be snubbed by their remaining choices (Tullis 2014). Good schools are a scarce commodity in the city which made fashioning an equitable way to distribute them most imperative.

However, the redesign sought only to fix the issue of ensuring that every student got one match rather than ensuring that the availability of choice was equal at all income levels and races. In 2003, Nobel Prize winning economist Alvin Roth and his colleagues Atila Abdulkadrigolu, and Parag Pathak implemented a version of the deferred acceptance algorithm, whose most widespread use is to match graduates of medical school to residency programs, which involved both students and schools listing their preferences but having the Department of Education responsible for the sorting  (Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, & Roth, 2005). In its first year of implementation, the number of unmatched in the first round of matching fell from 31,000 in 2003 to roughly 3,000 (or 8 percent of the applicant pool) (Tullis 2014). In 2014, forty-eight percent received offers from their top choice, and 86 percent were matched within their top five schools  (Introduction to High School Admissions Summer Workshop Packet, 6). In the redesigned choice system, all rising ninth graders apply in December of their eighth-grade year by completing the Department of Education’s High School Admissions Application form which asks for basic information such as gender, school information, final report card grades, and attendance record. In this application, students must also rank up to 12 high schools (not including specialized high schools which will be discussed later). In February, the algorithm is employed to match the applicants to one of the twelve listed schools. The algorithm goes through all the proposed schools on a student’s list and attempts to match them with the school highest on the list that they are eligible to attend, based on whether they have met the admissions criteria for the school and there are available seats. The admissions methods determine the way students are selected to receive an offer to a particular high school. Some schools are completely unscreened and thus have no admissions methods; these schools are the least selected as students are purely chosen at random from the list of those who ranked that school. However, for the most selective admissions methods may include auditions, on-site exams, standardized test scores, interviews, essays, or place of residence (zoning) and, in some cases, a combination of these methods (New York City High School Directory, 5).

Although more students got placed in high schools in the first round, the process heavily favored middle to upper income, college-educated families who would be familiar with this type of higher education matching model. Wealthier, educated families engaging in the NYC choice process appear to be desired and prioritized by the Department of Education as this medical school choice algorithm model is one that they are already familiar with (Perez 12). In addition to having this baseline of awareness of the process, they can also invest more time and effort into researching schools, the application process and the best strategy for gaming the system. While wealthy parents begin learning about the specifics of the NYC process from the moment their child comes of school age, most low-income families do not begin learning about the process until their child is in seventh or eighth grade. As Perez writes, “poor parents are not aware that the high school admissions process is a competitive game that has specific rules” (Perez 446). Higher-income parents knew how to make the system work for them while low-income families, unfortunately, placed an undue amount of faith in the process even as it failed to produce quality choices for their children (Perez 371). Low-income minority families accept the facade that all schools in the system are good or worth the choice and that the same choices are available to all families by the mere ranking of preferences. Sadly, they are not aware of the dynamics of the political economy that allows wealthy and middle-class families to benefit from the public system.  Thus, it is low-income, minority families–those who need quality public schools the most because they cannot afford other options–having disparate incomes because the system prevents them from accessing and utilizing information in the same way.

The Specialized High Schools Process

Perhaps the most disparate of high school choice outcomes is occurring in the city’s top high schools– the specialized high schools. Each specialized high school offers the standard New York State liberal arts curriculum in addition to rigorous electives, especially in the school’s area of specialization or theme. Modeled after the Boston Latin School, the specialized high schools were the epitome of American meritocracy–institutions that provided “unlimited educational opportunity to any New York pupil qualified to take advantage of it, including the most talented children of the city’s multitudinous immigrants” (MacDonald). These high schools are among the highest performing in the city. They have more course offerings and the most extracurricular activities and sports teams than most other high schools in New York City, public or otherwise. These schools are also informal feeders into the Ivy League and top colleges in the United States and have produced several Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners and leaders around the globe. Eight of the nine current specialized high schools require students to sit the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) as the sole admissions criteria. The other specialized high school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (LaGuardia High School), in keeping with its artistic mission, requires that students audition/present portfolio of work instead of taking the SHSAT. As such, LaGuardia will not be discussed here. The other eight–namely Stuyvesant High School, The Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School, The Brooklyn Latin School, Staten Island Technical School, High School of American Studies at Lehman College, Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, and the High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at the City College of New York–conceivably give students the best chance at an excellent high school education because unlike other top-performing high schools like Hunter College High School, admittance is not complicated by a multiplicity of factors such as standardized test scores, essays, and interviews (2015-2016 Specialized High Schools Student Handbook). However, the information gap appears to be at its worst in regards to the specialized high schools. Few minority families opt to take the test and even fewer gain admittance into one of the eight.

Background

Every October roughly 29,000 eighth grade New York City students opt to take the free but difficult examination for entrance into one of the specialized public high schools. Although they will also apply to be matched to traditional public high schools, most test takers hope to be one of the 5,000 to score high enough to be granted a seat at a specialized school. To determine offers to a Specialized High School, scores are matched with the schools the have ranked. Scores from all the students who sat the exam are ranked from highest to lowest. The highest performing student is automatically placed in his first choice specialized high school and each subsequent student is matched with the school they have ranked highest until all available seats in that school are filled. If a student does not score high enough to get a seat at their first choice school, then the student is matched with their second choice specialized high school. Traditionally, Stuyvesant High School attracts students with the highest scores and thus Stuyvesant is normally the school whose seats are filled first, followed by the Bronx High School of Science, and so on. This process continues until all the available seats at all eight specialized high schools are filled. After this process, any student not matched with a specialized high school enters the general pool of students seeking placement in traditional public schools (2015-2016 Specialized High Schools Student Handbook).

Specialized high schools have “become a powerful symbol in a larger public debate about educational equity” (Corcoran 2015). For decades, the admissions process to these public high schools has been plagued by controversy because of the underrepresentation of African-American and Latino students in their populations.  In 2012, New York City’s overall eighth-grade population was 16.6 percent Asian, 15.2 percent white, 27.7 percent African-American, and 40.5 percent Latino. However, as Corcoran and Baker-Smith write, the incoming ninth grade population at the three oldest and largest schools, Stuyvesant, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical School, was wholly unrepresentative of the city at large— 22 percent were white, and 64 percent were Asian, while just 4 percent and 5 percent were African-American or Latino, respectively (Wong).

Critics argue that test is biased against Black and Latino students who often attend poor middle schools that cannot satisfactorily prepare students in the advanced topics in math and English featured on the test. Similar to the SAT for college admissions, the SHSAT is two-sectioned test that assesses reading and quantitative skills. In 150 minutes, students must complete 50 mathematics and 45 verbal multiple choice questions (Taylor 15). As the Specialized High Schools Student Handbook describes, “The test measures knowledge and skills students have gained over the years. Keeping up with schoolwork throughout the year is the best possible preparation” (16).  Although the concepts on the test are taught as part of the regular middle school curriculum, the types of questions and level of difficulty would be unfamiliar to students if they did not have outside learning (Taylor 15).The belief is that questions in this manner may tap into higher order thinking skills than those measured by state achievement test scores or elementary and middle school performance and indicate the potential for success at one of these schools. However, critics argue that many low-income, minority students, who already attend poor performing schools that do not sufficiently teach the basic curriculum, would be thoroughly disadvantaged. Most successfully admitted students have studied for months or even years and many have worked with tutors or have taken at least one exam preparation course to gain a competitive edge to secure entrance (Taylor 15). Thus, the use of a test is seen additionally as discriminatory method of gauging potential achievement because the testing culture favors those families who can afford outside test preparation. This invariably prohibits socioeconomically disadvantaged students from a high-quality education. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has requested proposals from testing companies to create a new, more equitable test (Wong). Nevertheless, most reformers advocate greater change including adopting additional admissions criteria for these schools, would include school grades, attendance records, and state test scores (Taylor).

However, this paper argues that strategies that aim to push one minority out in order to let another minority group in are counterproductive. Research reveals no bias in the test; in fact, evidence shows that requiring multiple admissions criteria would lead to even fewer percentages of African-American and Latino students (Wong). Most test antagonizers also fail to recognize that although outside test prep is prevalent, between 34 percent to 61 percent of the students at all of these specialized high schools are eligible for free lunch (classified as a family of four earning under $35,000 per year) (Robinson).

Although improving the quality of middle schools for all students and combatting residential segregation would be the most ideal political solutions, the racial imbalance can also be tackled by addressing the deeper systemic problems in communication of the availability and value of the specialized high school option. Corcoran and Baker-Smith find that the likelihood of taking the test was correlated to race with Latino and Black students each 3 percent less likely to sit the SHSAT than white students. Asian students, on the other hand, were 17 percent more likely than the average to take the test (DiMartino 2015). The SHSAT is particularly popular among first-generation Asian families and journalistic and anecdotal evidence suggests that knowledge of the SHSAT extends as far as mainland China (Wong). Black and Latino students, on the other hand, have often never heard about the exam or have been told by their middle school guidance counselors that specialized high schools “[aren’t] for our kids” (Santos). If Black and Latino families have greater difficulty accessing and interpreting information about high school choice options and are being told that certain elite options do not match with their intrinsic identities, then they are already limiting themselves to lower academic achievement. Thus, policy interventions that reduce the cost of acquiring and analyzing information on high schools may result in more low-income Black and Latino parents exercising greater and more equitable choice in the admissions process. As a result, one solution may be to improve the marketing of and provision of information about specialized high schools to Black and Latino populations to improve the numbers of students who sit the exam.

Closing the Information Gap

Addressing the inequitable distribution of information about the specialized high school admissions process can improve levels diversity in the numbers of students taking the SHSAT and gaining entrance into the specialized high schools. The New York City High School Directory is a key resource for understanding this process and the multitude of options available. It provides information on the application process and time and basic information on the 438 different high schools including curriculum, extra-curricular activities, and eligibility  (New York City High School Directory). Every middle school guidance counselor should be in possession of the directory, however, Perez found the discrepancies in its distribution. More specifically, Perez finds that elementary schools in middle and upper middle class neighborhoods such as the Upper East Side of Manhattan had more access to the books than areas such as Spanish Harlem where the books were distributed late into the application process and sometimes Spanish-language versions were never distributed (Perez 398). Although the directory is available online, low-income, especially non-English speaking immigrant, families would have a hard time finding it on the very convoluted department website.

Although the directory was the main publication that families and staff referred to, Perez finds that higher-income parents were able to supplement the directory better than low-income parents because of “cultural differences” in seeking information (Perez 264). The directory is 649 pages long and thus cumbersome and overwhelming to many especially someone unfamiliar with the process (New York City High School Directory).

However, Madeline Perez finds that higher-income parents were able to circumvent the overwhelming task of sifting through the directory by accessing “trusted networks” of colleagues familiar with the system (226-227). Below Perez provides commentary and quotes from her conversations with Debbie, a mother who lives on the Upper East Side engaging in the process:

“The [directory] is huge and about five pounds heavy! We knew not to look through the entire thing…We knew what the deal was because of parents we’re acquainted with that have been at those schools.”… none of these parents used the directory as the sole source of information. Moreover, parents wrote comments on survey such as ‘the directory is only good for confirming program codes and school contact information” (226-227).

Low income parents simply relying on the information listed in the NYC high school directory was problematic because families often assume that the school offerings are consistent. Therefore, “students are disappointed when they discover the specialized program they want no longer exists, only consists of one class, or have been significantly diminished” (2010, p. 14). Perez uncovered that the information in the directory is collected nine months in advance, therefore offerings sometimes change (Perez, 400). Information on the choice process is at a premium because of the institutional belief on the part of the Department of Education that middle schools and families can and should take a more active role in the information retrieving process. The Department of Education website is especially telling of this logic in that it frequently suggests that middle school guidance counselors would be the main source of information and points of contact during this process (“Specialized High Schools”). However, in reality most middle schools in low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods have insufficient numbers of guidance counselors who are neither explicitly trained to handle or told to prioritize high school choice process advising (Perez 12). Addressing these flaws in the institutional mechanisms could help improve diversity in these schools. The Department of Education should make a more concerted effort to print and distribute information that is accessible and concise for parents and students as well as properly train middle school guidance counselors and consider having specific support staff available to lead more frequent workshops on the choice process.

Fixing Identity Perceptions

The educational choice process, due to its consumptive nature, “operates as much in the realm of symbols, emotions, and ideas as it does in the realm of ‘objective’ information,” meaning that the images associated with schools become internalized as part of one’s identity (Cucchiara 123). However, the specialized high school system is often labeled by Black and Latino parents and students as being only for White and Asian students because of the schools are assumed to be strictly STEM focus. Black and Latino communities perpetuate the myth that these students would inherently be uncomfortable in a specialized high school community because “you have to be Chinese or Indian to get in there” (Santos). Black and Latino children and parents are constantly under the impression that these students cannot do math and science and thus eschew the specialized high schools because there is the fear that the STEM focus is very strong (Santos). In actuality, there are a variety of specialized high school themes and not all of them are STEM-focused, which makes it unclear as to why the phenomenon of assuming them to all be STEM exists. Even so the curriculum at STEM-themed specialized high schools is not solely STEM. Perhaps these schools can remove the stigma associated with them by discarding the “specialized high school” label. The term communicates very little to prospective parents and students about the type of experience one should expect beyond the assumption that themes at these schools are perhaps stronger than themes at traditional public schools.

Conclusion

School choice in New York City is a competition for survival that puts low-income Black and Latino families at a severe disadvantage. As efficient as algorithms and market models are in facilitating the mechanisms of choice, they counter efforts at creating equitable and diverse learning experiences for students. Under-served populations must be prioritized and provided with the information that gives them the power to truly shape their enrollment patterns.

Works Cited

Abdulkadiroglu, A., Pathak, P. & Roth, A. E. The New York City High School Match. American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 2005.

Corcoran, S. P. & Baker-Smith, C. Pathways to an elite education: Application, admission, and matriculation to New York City’s Specialized High Schools. Working paper. The Research Alliance for New York City Schools. (2015)

Cucchiara Bloomfield, Maia, and Erin Horvat McNamara. “Choosing Selves: The Salience of Parental Identity in the School Choice Process.” Journal of Education Policy 29.4 (2014): 486–509. Web.

Cucchiara, Maia. “Thinking Locally: Attending to Social Context in Studies of Marketing and Public Education.” Peabody Journal of Education 91.1 (2016): 121–130. Web.

DiMartino, C., and S. B. Jessen. “School Brand Management: The Policies, Practices, and Perceptions of Branding and Marketing in New York City’s Public High Schools.” Urban Education (2014): 1-29. pag. Web.

Finn, Chester E., and Jessica A. Hockett. Exam Schools: Inside America’s Most Selective Public High Schools. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012. Web.

MacDonald, Heather. “The Hecht-Calandra Law, and the Establishment of the Specialized Science High Schools in New York City.” City Journal. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc., Spring 1999. Web. 06 May 2016.

New York City Department of Education (2016). New York City High School Directory. Web. 06 May 2016 <http://goo.gl/p3u7bQ>.

New York City Department of Education (2016). 2015-2016 Specialized High Schools Student Handbook. Web. 06 May 2016. <http://goo.gl/MpTiSx>.

New York City Department of Education (2015). Introduction to High School Admissions Summer Workshop Packet. Web. 06 May 2016 <http://goo.gl/heAwmU>.

Pérez, Madeline. “Two Tales of One City : A Political Economy of the New York City Public High School Admissions Process.” Doctoral Dissertation. The City University of New York, 2011. Web.

Santos, Fernanda. “To Be Black at Stuyvesant High.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 Feb. 2012. Web. 06 May 2016.

“Specialized High Schools.” Choices and Enrollment: High School. The New York City Department of Education, n.d. Web. 06 May 2016. <http://schools.nyc.gov/ChoicesEnrollment/High/specialized/default.htm>.

Taylor, Jonathan James, “Policy Implications of a Predictive Validity Study of the Specialized High School Admissions Test at Three Elite New York City High Schools” (2015). CUNY Academic Works. Web.

Tullis, Tracy. “How Game Theory Helped Improve New York City’s High School Application Process.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 06 Dec. 2014. Web. 06 May 2016.

Wong, Alia. “How to Solve the Diversity Problem at NYC’s Elite Public Schools.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 5 Mar. 2015. Web. 06 May 2016.

Arsalan Sufi, EDST 240 Final Paper

Introduction

Several American schools have curricular themes. For example, the Grand Rapids Public Schools website (2016) includes a page for the district’s twelve “theme schools,” each of which has a “customized curriculum” and “unique academic offerings.” The schools’ themes include environmental science, arts and music, Montessori, dual-immersion, and college prep. As this list demonstrates, school themes range from general educational models to specific subject-oriented themes. Montessori and International Baccalaureate schools are good examples of the former; STEM and performing arts schools are good examples of the latter. New Haven’s public school system also emphasizes theme (field notes). The system includes many magnet schools, which by definition have “focused theme[s] and aligned curricula” (Magnet Schools of America, 2016).

Theme goes hand-in-hand with the school choice model. Unlike the traditional neighborhood school model, the choice model gives parents the flexibility to choose where they send their children to school. To remain competitive in a choice system, schools market to parents, and theme is one of the mechanisms by which schools differentiate themselves. Parents (consumers) differentiate between schools (products) based on their themes; schools (producers) accordingly use themes (product features) to attract more parents.

Students have varying needs, and in theory, a choice system should allow parents to choose schools that accommodate their children’s specific needs. But the choice associated with theme doesn’t always meet this goal. Although theme development may have once been rooted in pedagogy, it seems that theme development is increasingly being driven by the market forces associated with the school choice model.

Methodology

Throughout this paper, I reference my and my classmates’ field notes from two New Haven choice fairs, which took place on February 3, 2016, and February 6, 2016. Each student in our class titled “Cities, Suburbs, and School Choice” visited at least one of the two fairs. Our approaches to collecting field notes varied. Some of us were more detached and, rather than engaging in conversations with participants at the fair, listened in on conversations. Others had conversations with students, parents, teachers, and school administrators. Among those of us who took the latter approach, some of us identified ourselves as Yale students conducting fieldwork while others pretended to be parents or students. We pooled all of our field notes together. These field notes will be cited throughout this paper using the following format: (student name, field notes). When no student name is included, the field notes are being referenced as a whole.

What It Means to Shift From Pedagogy-Driven to Market-Driven Development

The notion of shifting from pedagogy-driven to market-driven development is a bit abstract at this point in my paper. A study of the charter school movement, which has experienced a shift from pedagogy-driven to market-driven development much like school theme, will help make this notion more concrete.

Shanker’s Original Vision Versus Today’s Manifestation

The charter schools of today are very different from the charter schools that the father of the movement, Albert Shanker, envisioned. In 1988, Shanker proposed that groups of teachers be allowed to set up schools within their own schools to find ways of “reaching the kids that are now not being reached by what the school[s] [are] doing” (p. 12). Whereas Shanker wanted teachers to start charter schools, many of today’s charter schools are being started by entrepreneurs (Ravitch, 2010a). Shanker observed this transition himself and quickly revoked his support for charter schools. When Baltimore let Education Alternatives Inc., a for-profit business, take charge of nine of the city’s public schools in 1992, “Shanker was appalled” (Ravitch, 2010a, p. 125). Another important difference between Shanker’s charter schools and today’s charter schools involves the schools’ student bodies. Whereas Shanker wanted charter schools to support unmotivated students, today’s charter schools have become “havens for the motivated” (Ravitch, 2010a, p. 145).

From Teachers to Entrepreneurs

Both of these shifts can be linked to the school choice model. Milton Friedman’s pro-voucher argument provides an explanation for the first shift from teachers opening schools to entrepreneurs opening them. Friedman (1997) states that “The most feasible way to bring about a gradual yet substantial transfer from government to private enterprise is to enact in each state a voucher system that enables parents to choose freely the schools their children attend” (p. 341). Friedman views a market system as the solution to America’s education inequality problems and school choice, specifically vouchers, as the means to that end. By giving parents the funds to send their children to schools outside the traditional public school system, he believes that demand for these schools will grow, a profitable market will be created, and private groups will seize upon this opportunity. Although vouchers and charter schools represent different approaches to school choice, many of Friedman’s ideas also apply to charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded and privately run. In giving parents this new schooling option and providing private entities with the funds necessary to implement the option, the government has created a profitable market, one that entrepreneurs are indeed seizing upon. More generally, at the heart of school choice, whether in the form of vouchers or charter schools, is a “belief in the power of deregulation” (Ravitch, 2010a, p. 127). This deregulation makes it easier for private entities to set their foot in the education sector.

From Supporting the Unmotivated to Supporting the Motivated

The second shift from charter schools supporting unmotivated students to becoming havens for the motivated is largely explained by self-selection bias. But this shift, too, can be linked to the market forces associated with school choice. One of the fundamental market-based assumptions of the school choice model is that poorly performing schools will close (Ravitch, 2010a). This assumption is analogous to the capitalist notion that good businesses remain open and bad businesses close in the face of competition. By exercising their power to choose schools, parents will presumably pull their children out of failing schools. Or in the case of charter schools, the schools’ charters won’t be renewed. To start a charter school, an organization must obtain a charter from a state-authorized agency. The charter lasts for a finite number of years, and for it to be renewed, the charter school must meet performance goals set by the state-authorized agency. In short, the school choice model leads to heightened school accountability.

Although heightened accountability in and of itself isn’t harmful, the specific accountability measures that are being used to evaluate schools, most notably standardized tests, pose problems and help explain why charter schools have become havens for the motivated. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires states to test more and to increase sanctions for schools that don’t meet testing standards (Goertz and Duffy, 2003). This increased focus on testing combined with the already heightened accountability for charter schools has encouraged charter schools to push lower-performing students out. Take Success Academy, a high-performing charter school network in New York City, for example. The network has come under scrutiny for a “Got to Go” list maintained by one of its schools (Taylor, 2015). Making the link between school choice, accountability, testing, and exclusion of unmotivated students even more explicit, Ravitch (2010b) has found that “Some charter schools ‘counsel out’ or expel students just before state test day” (p. 7).

Transitioning to Theme

The charter school movement provides a salient example of a shift from pedagogy-driven to market-driven development. Although I won’t be looking at charter schools exclusively in my exploration of theme, the ideas that have been presented thus far aren’t isolated. Many of the same market forces that have caused charter schools to drift from their pedagogical roots have also influenced the development of school theme. Heightened accountability via testing, for example, is one of the primary forces that has led to the development of the “no excuses” model. The model, which can very well be considered a theme, is often described as militaristic. In addition to focusing on test drills, the model sets “clear and precise expectations for student behavior, dictating how students dress, enter a classroom, walk up the stairs, show attention in class, organize a binder, and pass in papers” (Golann, 2015, p. 3). The model seems to have limited grounding in pedagogy. For example, many students in these highly structured schools never learn how to navigate unstructured environments, like college. As a result, even though no-excuses schools produce high test scores, many of their students don’t complete college within six years (Golann, 2015). School leaders even recognize this but simply don’t “see a way to give students greater freedoms without compromising school order and achievement” (Golann, 2015, p. 12). In other words, they recognize the pedagogical flaws in the no-excuses theme but adhere to the theme because of a market force, namely the value placed on testing.

One market force associated with school choice that hasn’t yet been discussed is the importance placed on attracting parents. The rest of my paper focuses on this force. A brief history of theme and school choice will help give some context.

A Brief History of Theme

Early 1900s Theme Development

Although school theme is often associated with magnet schools, which took off in the 1970s to encourage desegregation, the history of theme in the American education system can be traced back much further. The first American Montessori school, for example, opened in Tarrytown, New York, in 1911 (Whitescarver and Cossentino, 2008). The model is far more freeform than the aforementioned no-excuses model as “Children are free to move about the room, selecting materials with which to work” and forming groups as they wish (Whitescarver and Cossentino, 2008, p. 2574). The model fizzled out in the US not long after its introduction and didn’t resurface until the 1960s (Whitescarver and Cossentino, 2008).

Despite the Montessori method’s short-lived initial phase in the US, the discourse around the method provides important insights. In short, the discourse, whether positive or negative, was pedagogical in nature. This is unsurprising given the nature of the Montessori method itself and the larger American context into which the method was being introduced. Regarding the former, Maria Montessori developed the elaborate educational philosophy over several years, building off of earlier work with special-needs children (Whitescarver and Cossentino, 2008). Montessori was an educator, and her model had strong pedagogical underpinnings. Regarding the latter, American education reformers were already engaging in a debate about how to best educate young children in the early 1900s (Whitescarver and Cossentino, 2008).

The Montessori method’s most established critic was William Heard Kilpatrick, a professor at Columbia’s Teachers College (Whitescarver and Cossentino, 2008). After visiting several American Montessori schools, talking to American proponents of the method, and meeting with Montessori herself, he concluded that her methods were built upon faulty science and that she was misunderstanding child development (Whitescarver and Cossentino, 2008). Although later education research would actually validate Montessori (Whitescarver and Cossentino, 2008), the nature of Kilpatrick’s criticisms is important. Both he and Montessori were concerned about the method’s impact on children. They weren’t concerned about parents’ perceptions of the model or the general desirability of the model.

Post-Civil-Rights Theme Development

Fast-forward to 1975. In Morgan v. Kerrigan, the United States Court of Appeals declared that magnet schools were a legal vehicle for desegregation (Goldring and Smrekar, 2002). Previous efforts to desegregate schools using busing had been met with resistance (Goldring and Smrekar, 2002). Magnet schools were to serve as an alternative. These schools would offer “specialized curricular themes” and would “provide a range of programs to satisfy individual talents and interests” to attract urban and suburban, minority and white parents alike (Goldring and Smrekar, 2002, p. 17).

Attracting white parents was critical. In Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the United States Supreme Court established a distinction between de jure and de facto segregation (Minnow, 2010). De jure segregation was produced by explicit policies; de facto segregation was a matter of fact, something that occurred independent of explicit policies. After Milliken v. Bradley, only de jure segregation needed to be addressed (Minnow, 2010). An indirect result of this case was increased white flight, which only resulted in de facto segregation (Minnow, 2010). Magnet schools sought to combat this by attracting white families and preventing them from fleeing to suburbs (Goldring and Smrekar, 2002).

Unlike the discourse surrounding Montessori schools in the 1910s, which revolved around pedagogy, the discourse surrounding magnet schools revolved around both pedagogy and marketing. These schools were going to address the needs of individual students, an idea grounded in pedagogy. Yet at the heart of this pedagogical desire was really a need to attract white parents, parents who otherwise wouldn’t send their children to urban schools. Market-driven undercurrents were beginning to form.

Present Theme Development

In the 1990s, the school choice movement gained traction (Ravitch, 2010a). Since then, many districts have adopted choice systems and have accordingly introduced magnet and charter schools. New Orleans provides an extreme example. After Hurricane Katrina, the city decided to rebuild its education system almost exclusively with charter schools (Jabbar, 2016). As school choice has become more prevalent, so has theme.

The Prevalence of Theme

To set the stage for my exploration of the dialogue between parents and schools regarding theme, it’s important to understand the prevalence of theme in present-day American school districts.

New Haven Public Schools

To understand just how prevalent theme can be, consider New Haven, a district with a large number of magnet schools. As the New Haven Public Schools website (2016) excitedly notes, the district is “home to the largest magnet program in Connecticut!” Even a cursory look at school names is telling. The following are all K-8 schools: Celentano Biotech Health and Medical Magnet, Brennan Rogers School of Communication and Media, Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet, and Davis Street Arts and Academics School (Sufi, field notes).The fact that these schools are all K-8 schools illustrates just how early the emphasis on theme begins. In addition to the district’s magnet schools, many of district’s neighborhood schools and both of its two comprehensive schools have themes (Sufi, field notes).

Comprehensive Schools and Theme

The fact that the district’s comprehensive schools also have themes merits discussion. All students gain acceptance to the comprehensive schools (Sufi, field notes). As a result, students who don’t get into any of the choice schools that they apply to can, and likely have to, attend these schools. The comprehensive James Hillhouse utilizes a school-within-a-school model with four academies: College and Career Academy; Innovation, Design, Entrepreneurship, and Action Academy; Law, Public Safety, and Health Academy; and Social Media and the Arts Academy (James Hillhouse website, 2016). This division into academies is actually quite explicit; the academies each have their own principal (Sufi, field notes). Wilbur Cross, New Haven’s other comprehensive high school, doesn’t divide itself as explicitly as James Hillhouse as the school still has a single head principal (Sufi, field notes). Like James Hillhouse though, Wilbur Cross has constituent “career-themed ‘academies’”: International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, Business and Fine Arts Academy, Health and Culinary Sciences Academy, and Law and Public Service Academy  (Wilbur Cross website, 2016).

The specialization of these comprehensive schools is surprising given their role as catch-all nets. What does this specialization mean for the students who attend a comprehensive school because they didn’t get into any of the choice schools that they applied to? It’s very possible that they won’t have a vested interest in any of the school’s focus areas. Although this issue is partially alleviated by the fact that the schools have multiple themes, the options are still finite. A more general, more fluid school would probably serve these students better. This raises the question: Why do the comprehensive schools have themes to begin with? It’s possible that parents have come to think of theme as a necessity. The comprehensive schools could alternatively translate their academies’ themes into elective classes, allowing students to specialize only if they choose to do so. The benefits of theme would be retained, and the downsides would be minimized. Yet this isn’t the case. It seems that the existence of outlets for specialization is less important than the explicit framing of these outlets as themes, that the pedagogical benefits of theme are overshadowed by parents’ perceptions of theme.

New Haven Choice Fairs and Theme

The importance of theme was highly visible at New Haven choice fairs. Many schools put items relevant to their themes on display. Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet displayed several student-made paintings of owls (Sufi, field notes). James Hillhouse Law, Public Safety, and Health Academy had a CPR dummy at its booth, and one STEM-focused school had a 3D printer at its booth (Sufi, field notes). More importantly however, conversations between parents and school representatives often involved theme. When asked what she looks for in schools, one parent commented, “I want to know what their theme is, what their mission is” (Nelson, field notes).

The Dialogue Between Parents and Schools: Parents

Two important points have been established: 1) the school choice model encourages schools to attract specific parents, a phenomenon grounded in the history of theme and school choice, and 2) theme is prevalent, especially in districts with large magnet programs. The stage has been set for an exploration of the dialogue between parents and schools with respect to theme, a dialogue that I intend to show is far removed from pedagogical concerns.

Parents’ Role in the School Choice Process

Even though decisions regarding theme affect students more than anyone else, parents are arguably the biggest consumers of theme. Many decisions regarding theme, especially in the case of younger students, are made by parents. This doesn’t seem surprising. While at a New Haven choice fair myself, I couldn’t help but wonder, “How could 5-year-olds be expected to know what they want to focus on academically?” There are exceptions to this rule. A mother this choice fair instructed her child to see if she liked anything, referencing the school booths (Cobb, field notes). Likewise, a handful of high school students could be seen visiting booths on their own (field notes). Nonetheless, for younger students, it was usually parents who were leading discussions at booths (field notes).

Different Ways of Interpreting Theme

Lower-income, less-informed parents and affluent, well-informed parents interpret theme differently. Ancess and Allen (2006) support this idea broadly, noting that “[themes] are read differently by different constituencies that have varying degrees of access and varied perspectives” (p. 409). Lower-income, usually minority parents tend to champion a “utility-based” approach to education, where education is seen as the means to an end, often a stable career (Lewis-McCoy, 2014, p. 57). They accordingly seem to take theme at face value. Utility-focused parents who send their children to STEM schools likely do so because they want their children to be equipped for careers in engineering and medicine.

Conversely, more affluent, usually white parents tend to champion an “abstract” approach to education, focusing on abstract ideals like intellectual exploration (Lewis-McCoy, 2014, p. 57). These parents seem to find theme unimportant at face value; instead, they focus on the secondary messages that theme conveys. Ancess and Allen (2006) describe exactly this phenomenon, claiming that themes are “code for social, economic, and academic status, race, post-secondary opportunity and ambition, and peer-group composition” (p. 409).When providing examples of codes, Ancess and Allen (2006) note that STEM themes are code for “academically high-performing students” (p. 409). As a result, abstract-focused parents who send their children to STEM schools may not do so because they want their children to pursue STEM careers; they may actually do so because they process STEM themes as indicators of school quality. Ancess and Allen (2006) describe several additional examples of codes: Career themes such as health or business are code for “workforce orientation rather than college ambition”, and social justice and leadership themes are often found in poor communities (p. 409).

Codes in New Haven

The notion that themes are codes, and that well-informed parents care about theme because of these codes as opposed to the themes themselves is heavily supported by my and my classmates’ observations of New Haven choice fairs. Beginning with the notion that well-informed parents don’t take themes at face value, one parent of a student at the Sound School, an aquaculture magnet, noted that her daughter was not at all interested in the school’s theme (Kentor, field notes). Given the many teachers and directors that she greeted (Kentor, field notes), this parent was clearly engaged in the school choice process; it wasn’t because she was uninformed that she sent her child to the Sound School. Rather, she actively decided that the misalignment of her daughter’s interests and her school’s theme was unimportant. In a similar spirit, two parents at the booth for High School in the Community Academy for Law and Social Justice asked about the school’s treatment of subjects outside the school’s theme (Borowski, field notes), possibly because they wanted to ensure that their students received well-rounded educations.

Regarding the notion that parents process theme as code, an administrator at one of the New Haven choice fairs noted that some of the most sought-after schools in New Haven are STEM schools with programs in robotics and computer science (Kentor, field notes). These programs demonstrate to families that the schools are both advanced and well-funded. In general, the schools with “clear and cogent” themes, specifically STEM and arts themes, attracted the largest crowds at the fair (Kentor, field notes). Schools with more general themes, on the other hand, send very different messages. Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy, which is one of the few neighborhood schools in New Haven, has a focus on literacy (Ali, field notes). Some parents may infer from the school’s “bare-bones” theme that the school is less advanced and that it’s geared toward English-language learners (Ali, field notes). The booth for the school did indeed appear quite empty (Sufi, field notes). This reminds us that codes can be positive and negative.

Transitioning to Schools

The key takeaway from this section is that parents, especially affluent, well-informed parents, have a relationship with theme that involves inferences much more so than pedagogical concerns. Given that schools in choice systems focus marketing efforts on affluent parents because of the social capital that they can offer (Cucchiara, 2008), we’re led to the question: Are schools aware of how these parents think about theme? And if so, are schools selecting themes to convey messages for marketing purposes instead of thinking about the pedagogical implications of theme? The answer to both of these questions appears to be yes; this is the focus of the next section.

The Dialogue Between Parents and Schools: Schools

District and school officials’ relationship with theme complements parents’ relationship with theme. These officials are aware of the processes by which parents evaluate themes, and they develop and market their themes accordingly.

Codes and Theme Development

Districts and schools are very aware of the messages that theme can convey. Ancess and Allen (2006) provide an example in their exploration of theme as code. At the time of their study, the Pablo Neruda Academy for Architecture and World Studies had far more male students than female students. This wasn’t intentional; rather, it had to do with the fact that “architecture signals ‘male’” (p. 409). When the district realized this, Pablo Neruda’s principal was actually advised to add the word “arts” to Pablo Neruda’s name so as to encourage more female students to attend the school. In other words, he was encouraged to offset the effect of one code with another.

A choice fair representative for New Haven’s West Rock Author’s Academy Interdistrict Magnet shared a very similar experience. Although West Rock Author’s Academy focuses on writing skills, the district had pushed the school to simultaneously focus on science and technology (Negrete, field notes), likely because the district is aware of how parents, advantaged and disadvantaged alike, perceive schools with STEM focuses. (“Advantaged and disadvantaged alike” meaning that both perceive STEM schools positively, albeit for different reasons.) Adding a STEM focus to the school’s existing literary focus would essentially mean that the school has no theme, which isn’t a bad thing. But it raises the question: Why even label the school as being themed? Isn’t a STEM-literature-themed school just a general school? This example shares certain parallels with the earlier mention of New Haven’s comprehensive schools. There’s an emphasis placed on framing schools as themed, in this case even when the school isn’t themed.

Top-Down Theme Development

The above two examples reveal the top-down nature of theme development. District officials, who are more removed from students than school officials, are making the recommendations. A bottom-up approach would make much more sense, with those closest to students, namely teachers, making pedagogical recommendations to school officials. Indeed, this sort of approach would bring us much closer to Shanker’s vision for charter schools.

Lubienski (2003) makes an important observation: In competing for students, schools “tend to emulate established conceptions of schooling rather than use their autonomy to try substantively different approaches” (p. 396). Even though school choice advocates emphasize innovation, school choice in practice requires schools to play it safe. There’s little incentive for schools to let teachers innovate and drive theme development. Instead, higher-ups, who know how parents perceive theme, are given the decision-making power.

Theme as a Tool for Signaling Fit

Wilson and Carlsen (2016) expand the notion of theme as code. Not only do schools use theme to send messages to parents about resources and rigor; they also use theme to suggest who belongs at their schools. The example of Pablo Neruda, the architecture school that was encouraged to add “arts” to its name so as to attract more female students, skimmed the surface of this idea. Wilson and Carlsen (2016) study charter school websites as tools for signaling fit, and they find that these websites use implicit discourses involving race, culture, diversity, and academic achievement. Ironically, this approach exacerbates many of the divisions in society that school choice seeks to remedy as it creates sub-markets. In their analysis of the Twin Cities metro area, Wilson and Carlsen (2016) identify four types of charter schools: elite and international, culturally specific, results-oriented, and progressive. With the exception of the progressive charter schools, each type seems to target a specific population. For example, the results-oriented schools’ websites emphasize the achievement gap, implicitly appealing to lower-income and minority families.

Drifting from Pedagogy

Of the four types of charter schools that Wilson and Carlsen (2016) identify, only the progressive charter schools discuss academics in terms of concrete pedagogical processes. The elite and international schools emphasize general intellectualism. The culturally-specific schools used similarly vague language, and the results-oriented schools emphasize accountability measures such as test scores. Once again, the focus of theme development seems to be less on what is best for students pedagogically and more on what will successfully attract parents or subsets of parents.

Teachers and Students

Teachers and students have limited say in matters of theme yet are arguably the most impacted by theme. Their voices add an interesting and important perspective to my argument.

Teachers

In a review of the small themed high schools that New York City opened in 2005, Gootman (2005) noted that many of the recruited teachers at these schools had only a passing interest in the theme. Given the shortage of teachers in US, this raises a valid question: If we’re having trouble hiring teachers as it is, how are we going to find enough teachers interested in specific themes like architecture? And if we do have to hire teachers who don’t have an interest in the theme, what is the experience of these teachers like? Gootman (2005) also notes that, at some of the theme schools, “the people who helped develop the theme have already left.” This could result in incomplete or unfinished curriculums, burdening teachers with the task of filling in the curricular gaps.

Students

Students frequently change their minds with respect to academic interests and career choices. A New Haven school administrator even noted that only 10% of the students that she has gotten to know have stuck with the same magnet theme when transitioning from middle to high school (Kentor, field notes). What happens when a student’s interests change? Or as Gootman (2005) asks, “What happens… when a sophomore at a culinary schools decides that architecture is his passion?”

In addition to to the students who change their minds, what about the students who attend a themed school because they had no other options? This brings us back to the earlier discussion of New Haven’s comprehensive schools and the fact these catch-all schools have themes. The experiences of students who are interested in a school’s theme versus those who aren’t can be radically different. Gootman (2005) includes a powerful example. When Mr. Sanchez assigned an architectural project with an accompanying essay, Jennifer Quintero “produced an ornate model and an essay indicating that she really got it.” On the other hand, another student who wasn’t interested in the school’s theme wrote, “This building has elevators to. This building gots 6th floors. 1st and 2nd floor is a video game store.”

Why This All Matters

There’s nothing inherently wrong with themes. As Jennifer’s example in the above anecdote illustrates, when a student is interested in a school’s theme, and the theme is implemented well, the outcomes are great. Students are inspired. Problems arise when we consider how theme is developing.

Misusing Funds

As a result of the shift from pedagogy-driven to market-driven development, school funding may be allocated to theme-related purchases without considering whether the items will actually improve students’ learning experiences. Similarly, a school may purchase an item to display at a choice fair and never use it. Several schools at the New Haven choice fair tied descriptions of theme to descriptions of resources. Aces Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet, for example, mentioned their school’s focus on technology in conjunction with the fact that students use iPads and Chromebooks (Sufi, field notes). Similarly the Brennan-Rogers School for Media and Communications advertised its green room, and the Barnard Environmental Studies School advertised its nature center (Ali, field notes). This isn’t to say that these three schools don’t use their advertised resources. It’s only to say that this could happen if theme continues developing as it is. At the most extreme end of the spectrum, an entire school may be built with a certain theme in mind, and that theme may then be changed, requiring much of the building to be repurposed. This was the case for New Haven’s Celentano Museum Academy, which was repurposed as Celentano Biotech, Health, and Medical Magnet (Appel, 2014).

An Additional Source of Inequity in School Choice Systems

Differential access to information is a critical source of inequity in choice systems. The differences between how less-informed and well-informed parents process theme is yet another example of this differential access. This particular issue is complicated by the fact that few marketing officials will admit that there are secondary messages conveyed by themes. As a result, not only is this information hard to access; it really can’t be accessed without social capital.

Conclusion

Themes are convenient as they make it easy for schools to distinguish themselves from one another. They also allow well-informed parents to make inferences, and schools to target these parents accordingly. These market-based uses push theme further and further away from its pedagogical roots. Only if this trend is reversed, and theme is returned to its pedagogical roots, will theme begin to satisfy the pedagogical goal of the school choice model: giving every student access to a school that meets his or her specific needs.

Limitations

I was only able to find so many anecdotes involving teachers and students at themed schools. Their voices are incredibly important, and I wish I’d been able to include more from their perspective. Similarly, although I was able to find research on how well-informed parents process theme, I wasn’t able to find as much on how less-informed parents process theme, besides Lewis-McCoy’s discussion of the utility-based approach to education.

This all points to a more general limitation. Because of the limited time that I had to work on this project, I was unable to attain IRBs and perform interviews. This would’ve allowed me to fill in the aforementioned gaps in perspective. Likewise, if I had more time, I’d love to collect field notes in other districts to see if my claims regarding New Haven can truly be extrapolated to other choice districts.

References

Ancess, J., and Allen, D. (2006). Implementing Small Theme High Schools in New York City: Great Intentions and Great Tensions. Harvard Educational Review, 76(3), 401–416.

Appel, A. (2014). Celentano Morphs Into Biotech Middle School. New Haven Independent.

Cucchiara, M. (2008). Re-branding Urban Schools: Urban Revitalization, Social Status, and Marketing Public Schools to the Upper Middle Class. Journal of Education Policy, 23(2), 165–179.

Friedman, M. (1997). Public Schools: Make Them Private. Education Economics, 5(3), 341–344.

Goertz, M., and Duffy, M. (2003). Mapping the Landscape of High-Stakes Testing and Accountability Programs. Theory Into Practice, 42(1), 4–11.

Golann, J. W. (2015). The Paradox of Success at a No-Excuses School. Sociology of Education, 1–17.

Goldring, E., and Smrekar, C. (2000). Magnet Schools and the Pursuit of Racial Balance. Education and Urban Society, 33(1), 17–35.

Gootman, E. (2005). Early Gains and Losses at City’s Themed Schools. The New York Times.

Grand Rapids Public Schools. (2016). Theme School Listings. Grand Rapids Public Schools website. Retrieved from http://www.grps.org/ourschools/theme-schools

Jabbar, H. (2016). Selling Schools: Marketing and Recruitment Strategies in New Orleans. Peabody Journal of Education, 91(1), 4–23.

James Hillhouse High School. (2016). Home Page. James Hillhouse High School website. Retrieved from http://hillhousecampus.org

Lewis-McCoy, R. L. (2014). Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Lubienski, C. (2003). Innovation in Education Markets: Theory and Evidence on the Impact of Competition and Choice in Charter Schools. American Educational Research Journal, 40(2), 395–443.

Magnet Schools of America. (2013). What Are Magnet Schools? Magnet Schools of America website. Retrieved from http://www.magnet.edu/about/what-are-magnet-schools

Minnow, M. (2010). In Brown’s Wake. New York: Oxford University Press.

New Haven Public Schools. (2016). Our Schools. New Haven Public Schools website. Retrieved from http://www.nhps.net/schools

Ravitch, D. (2010a). The Death and Life of the Great American School System. New York: Basic Books.

Ravitch, D. (2010b). The Myth of Charter Schools. The New York Review of Books.

Shanker, A. (1988). National Press Club Speech.

Taylor, K. (2015). At a Success Academy Charter School, Singling Out Pupils Who Have ‘Got to Go’. The New York Times.

Wilbur Cross High School. (2016). Academy Structure. Wilbur Cross High School website. Retrieved from http://schools.nhps.net/wcross/AcademyStructure.html

Wilson, T. S., and Carlsen, R. L. (2016). School Marketing as a Sorting Mechanism: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Charter School Websites. Peabody Journal of Education, 91(1), 24–46.

Whitescarver, K., and Cossentino, J. (2008). Montessori and the Mainstream: A Century of Reform on the Margins. Teachers College Record, 110(12), 2571–2600.

Yale Education Studies 240 class. (2016). Field notes from New Haven choice fairs on February 3, 2016, and February 6, 2016.

Mayra Negrete

Introduction

Parents consider many things when deciding where to send their children to school. They must choose between public and private, small and large, and close and far away schools. The options are not the same for all parents, however. Some families are constrained by where they live and the school options available in their area. Magnet schools provide parents with a slightly different option. They allow students to go outside of their neighborhood schools. Magnet schools “have historically been a popular way for school districts to comply with desegregation orders” (Frankenberg et al., 8). Magnet schools are therefore used as a way to produce racially diverse schools. They “were designed to offer parents an alternative to traditional educational programmes with the goal of encouraging families, White families mostly, to allow their children to be bussed to schools, other than their neighbourhood school” (Andre-Bechely, 1359). Just because these schools were designed to desegregate education does not mean that they necessarily do. In places where magnet schools only allow mobility within the district, students may end up going to magnet schools that are as segregated as the neighborhood schools these students would have otherwise attended. This is in fact what we observe in many of the magnet high schools in Los Angeles. Magnet high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) are not meeting the goal of desegregation. The LAUSD magnet schools’ demographics illustrate the shortcomings of the magnet program in reaching its goal and bring into question the benefits of attending one of these schools.

The LAUSD magnet schools website describes the magnet programs as “Court-Ordered voluntary integration opportunities available to students in grades K-12 living within the LAUSD boundaries” (echoices). A key component of these schools is choice. A parent makes the choice to enroll his child in a magnet school. Moreover, the parent decides which magnet school is the one for his child. Though students are not ensured a place in a magnet school, there is some notion of agency in the process. While this means that parents can choose to send their children to these schools, it also means that parents can choose not to send their children to them. It is therefore important to understand why magnet schools were created in the first place and what they attempt to achieve.

The case Crawford v. Los Angeles Board of Education was crucial to the creation of magnet schools in Los Angeles. Mary Crawford had been denied access to the school nearest her residence in 1961 “for no reason other than the School Board’s policy to ensure the separation of races” (University of La Verne Law Review). In 1963, minority students filed a class action against the district and in 1970, “the trial court issued an opinion finding that the District was substantially segregated in violation of the State and Federal Constitutions. The court ordered the District to prepare a desegregation plan for immediate use” (Justia U.S. Supreme Court). However, Proposition 1 which dealt with mandatory transporting of students was debated and later ratified (Justia U.S. Supreme Court). The case ended with the following opinion of the court in 1982:

“An amendment to the California Constitution provides that state courts shall not order mandatory pupil assignment or transportation unless a federal court would do so to remedy a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The question for our decision is whether this provision is itself in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.” (Justia U.S. Supreme Court)

While this case did not directly result in magnet schools, it was during the time that it was being decided that the magnet program was created.

The programs “were established by the District in 1977 as part of its Voluntary Integration Programs [and] the goal of the programs was to establish and maintain programs with specialized curricular offerings that would draw students of various ethnic backgrounds” (Alkin et al., 16). The stated goal of the program has several implications. First, it acknowledges the importance of integration and the benefits that students receive from not being racially isolated. However, while it appears to have the goal of equalizing educational opportunities, by adding specialized curricula in order to attract White students, the program perpetuates a system of inequality. Given that White students are the ones targeted for these schools in order to result in more racially balanced schools, the specialized curricula appear to be for their benefit. Combined with the fact that not all minority students can attend magnet schools and have access to these resources, a system of inequality in continued with many minority students being denied access to the resources these schools offer.

Early Desegregation Results within Magnet Schools

How successful were magnet schools originally in achieving desegregation? It is necessary to find out if LAUSD magnet schools ever actually achieved this goal or if it was something that was never attained. In the years 1982-1983, schools located in predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian, and other Non-Anglo (PHBAO) areas “[had] not attracted sufficient numbers of White students to yield desegregated environments” (Alkin et al., 17). This suggests that White parents may not have wanted to send their children to schools in areas high in minority populations. This may especially be true at the high school level, as Marvin Alkin notes that “only about one-third of the programs at the secondary and other configurations were desegregated [and] the greater proportion of PHBAO magnets at the secondary level appears to be at least partly due to their location (Alkin et al., 46). Alkin’s did find that “slightly more than half of the elementary programs met the desegregation criteria” in 1982-1983 (Alkin et al., 46). It is possible, then, that magnets were being successful in desegregating at the elementary level and not at the secondary and high school levels. Magnet high schools were thus in need of more desegregation even in 1982.

Deviating from Original Goal

            The original goal of desegregating schools may no longer be a priority for magnet schools. Some school districts have moved away from desegregation and “desegregation has been replaced with other efforts, such as race-neutral goals like socioeconomic integration, and in other instances with goals that de-emphasized racial or socioeconomic concentrations of students altogether” (Frankenberg et al., 23). Additionally, “there has also been an increasing emphasis on raising the academic performance of American school children” (Frankenberg et al., 12). An emphasis on academic performance may take away time and attention from desegregation plan making. While “magnet programs have been successful at improved academic outcomes… the addition of these extra educational goals makes it more difficult to focus on trying to prevent segregation” (Frankenberg et al., 13). The academic achievement that students are attaining in magnet schools is of course of importance, but the benefits of integration may be compromised in the process of focusing more on test scores. Attention to integration is necessary because if schools did not really achieve desegregation even when it was their goal to do so, then when it is no longer the goal, the probability is even lower that magnet schools will be centers of racial integration. Among those schools that have changed their goals and are don’t have desegregation as a goal anymore, “a disproportionately high percentage…report a decrease in integration levels” (Frankenberg et al., 24). This suggests that without the explicit goal of desegregation, integration does not occur. It appears necessary to maintain integration as a priority in order to have desegregated schools.

People have been working to achieve integration and a deemphasizing of desegregation now could undue that work. Gary Orfield, of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, states that “after an increase in integration for black students for a third of the century, segregation began to intensify again… [and that] the impact of the repeal or non-enforcement of desegregation plans became apparent in a number of regions, particularly in the South, where most of the mandatory desegregation occurred” (Ofield, 5). Though magnet schools are based on voluntary desegregation rather than mandatory, similar results of resegregation seem likely. Orfield’s mentioning of non-enforcement of desegregation plans parallels the magnet schools’ deviation from the original goal of desegregation. If resegregation occurs when there is no enforcement of desegregation plans, it may be that White parents are not easily willing to place their children in schools that are racially diverse, meaning that schools need to take actions that will result in racially integrated schools. A 2008 study on magnet schools found that “while schools with desegregation goals had the highest share of schools that were also substantially integrated (38.6%), the second-highest category of schools that were integrated were schools without any desegregation goals” (Frankenberg et al., 23). From this finding it may seem that having or not having desegregation goals did not make much of a difference in levels of integration, but it is important to look at what the level of integration was in those schools that had at one point had desegregation goals and were changing them for different goals. Because the LAUSD magnet schools were created with the objective of desegregation, it is this transitioning group of schools that are relevant for analyzing integration levels, if it is the case that LAUSD magnets are changing goals. The schools that were changing goals “had the lowest percentage [16.1%] considered substantially integrated” (Frankenberg et al., 23). This indicates that while never having had desegregation goals did not have such a significant impact, changing the goals to something else did result in low numbers of integrated schools.

In addition to schools changing their objectives from desegregation, the government appears to also be placing less importance on this goal. The government has shown this change in objectives in that “the number of magnet schools that receive MSAP [Magnet Schools Assistance Program] funding has declined in recent grant cycles because the overall funding level has remained stagnant and not adjusted for inflation at just over $100 million” (Frankenberg et al., 15). By not adjusting funding, schools are condemned to working with limited resources and are sent the message that their objectives are not a priority. Combined with schools themselves showing a shift in goals, this government shift in goals adds to the likelihood that magnet schools will move away from their original objectives and move towards goals that the government may view as more important and that may result in increased funding. Schools’ goal shift may or may not be a consequence of inadequate funding, but the two are bound to interact in ways that change how schools operate and what objectives they decide to prioritize or keep. This shift in government priorities has been happening for decades. The “desegregation aid program [the Emergency School Act Aid] , which was widely popular and had been shown to improve interracial schools, was summarily ended in President Reagan’s first budget [and] since then there has been only a small program of aid to magnet schools (Orfield, 13).  President Reagan was therefore outright against magnet schools’ stated objectives and a cut in funds was a way to limit their ability to put desegregation plans into action.

Policies were also put in place to prevent desegregation. For example, under the Rehnquist Court in the 1990s, it was established that “positive policies taking race into account for the purpose of creating integration were suspect and had to demonstrate both a compelling reason and prove the goal could not be realized without considering race [and] these policies led some lower courts to forbid even voluntary action for desegregation, such as magnet schools with desegregation policies for admissions” (Orfield, 16). The actions of those in higher positions of power appear to have heavily influenced what happened within schools. Because the court’s conclusion led to the forbidding of even voluntary desegregation, magnet schools lost one of their mechanisms for creating racially diverse schools. The Rehnquist Court’s opinion likely impacted LAUSD magnet schools’ ability to create integrated schools. The LAUSD choices website states that “each Magnet’s openings are determined by the need to maintain a racially balanced enrollment and by available space” (echoices). If these schools were no longer allowed to openly use race for admission, they might have had trouble in determining how many openings were left in their schools. This could manifest itself in schools using other characteristics for enrollment such as students’ addresses, socioeconomic status, or even last names. Conversely, it could result in magnet schools being discouraged from trying to achieve racial integration and ending up being schools that are as racially segregated as neighborhood schools.

Methodology

Information for this paper was gathered from numerous sources. Google Scholar was one of the search engines used to obtain academic articles on the topic. In order to find relevant research, it was necessary to search for information on both LAUSD magnet schools in particular and magnet schools in general. This provided current information on the topic and previous research that had explored similar questions. The previous research on the topic was used to contextualize the current question as to whether LAUSD magnet schools are currently reaching their stated objective of desegregation and what the implications are in the cases of failed desegregation. Additionally, because it was necessary to learn about why magnet schools in Los Angeles had been established, the Crawford v. Los Angeles Board of Education case was also referred to for information. The case was used to learn about what preceded the establishment of the schools and what guidelines were set for the making of these schools. It was also necessary to determine just how successful or unsuccessful Los Angeles magnet schools have been in becoming racially integrated schools.  Information was first gathered from the LAUSD magnet website to determine exactly what these schools/this program was intended for and how it was meant to operate.

Data was gathered from the school information branch site and from the Elementary and Secondary Information System (ELSI). This data was for school demographics. Data for all schools in LAUSD was available on the school information branch site (http://search.lausd.k12.ca.us/), and the schools of interest were magnet high schools in the district. The racial demographics were available for the 2013-2014 school year and they provided the numbers and percentages of students attending the schools from the following racial/ethnic categories: American Native/ Alaska Native, Asian, Pacific Islander, Filipino, Hispanic, Black, and White. This data was analyzed to figure out how many schools were at least 25% White/ less than 75% minority. The data from ELSI was analyzed to determine how numbers of White students in magnet high schools has changed over time. Finally, for city demographics and average home values the websites census.gov and Zillow.com were utilized. This data was used to determine what the racial demographics were of those cities that belonged to school districts other than LAUSD and what the average home values were in order to determine what socioeconomic status people had to belong to in order to be able to afford living in these cities.

Current Racial Demographics in LAUSD Magnet Schools

After looking at the schools’ demographic data, it became evident that LAUSD magnet schools were not achieving desegregation. Out of the 59 magnet high schools (grades 9-12) for which data was available, only 13 had at least 25% White students (search.lausd.k12.ca.us). This means that the majority of magnet high schools in this district are composed of at least 75% minorities. In fact, many schools were 99% minority students (search.lausd.k12.ca.us). Furthermore, for the nine schools for which there was information on ELSI about changes in racial demographics, only one school had an increase in percentage of White students between the 1997-1998 school year and the 2013-2014 school year (see Graph). This suggests that the Rehnquist Court’s policy changes previously mentioned did impact how many White students magnet schools were able to enroll. Most of these schools were not succeeding very much with desegregation to begin with, as shown by the fact that only one of the nine schools had more than 25% White students in 1997-1998 (ELSI). Likely in part due to the policy changes that deemphasized desegregation and the changing magnet school objectives, these magnet high schools are still as far from achieving integration today as they were 16 years ago. These demographics illustrate the segregated nature of these schools. Moreover, they suggest that White students are electing to attend other types of schools.

Perhaps this is due to the cities that make up the school district, or rather the cities that are not part of the district. Looking at the map below, it becomes evident that many of the cities that are not part of LAUSD are primarily white and middle and upper income areas.  In fact, every city surrounding Beverly Hills is part of the district except for Beverly Hills. The same is true for Santa Monica. Beverly Hills was 77.4% white in 2014 and Santa Monica was 77.6% white in 2010 (census.gov).

http://achieve.lausd.net/domain/34

If it is a trend that those cities with large percentages of White residents have separate school districts, then it will be extremely difficult for magnet schools to have a significant number of White students given that LAUSD magnet schools are not inter-district, but rather intra-district, meaning they only enroll students who reside in cities that are within the school district. The map shows that cities along the beach are not part of LAUSD. Because of these cities’ locations, housing is higher than in other parts of Los Angeles. Hermosa Beach, for example, had an average home value of $1,445,700 and Palos Verdes Estates had an average home value of $1,964,800, according to Zillow.com (Zillow.com). These high home values suggest that these cities’ residents come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Because of the history of this country where minorities have been marginalized, it is more likely that those of higher socioeconomic status are White. Beverly Hills and Santa Monica also have extremely high home values at $3,189,700 and $1,326,400, respectively (Zillow.com).  By creating their own school districts, these cities are not only creating obstacles to racial integration, but are also keeping their capital concentrated in their region. This racial and socioeconomic isolation of those living in cities like Beverly Hills and Santa Monica impedes magnet schools from having access to White students and from having capital apart from what the government allocates for magnet schools. Due to the fact that cities that are largely White have separate school districts, magnet schools in LAUSD do not have many options of where they can draw White students from in order to have more racially balanced schools.

Implications of Failed Desegregation

The failed desegregation and therefore integration of magnet schools has consequences. The benefits of integration are lost with a failure to desegregate. Claire Smrekar and Ellen Goldring found that with regards to desegregation, “the issues of racism and intolerance born out of ignorance and isolation seem to coalesce for many parents into a perspective that considers school integration at the elementary school level an important starting point” (Smrekar and Goldring, 106). Desegregation and integration are therefore important issues for parents who want to do something to try to solve race relation problems that exist in society. These parents are acknowledging that racial isolation is one of the causes of racism. They realize that not having exposure to people of other races or ethnicities is detrimental to their children and to society as a whole. LAUSD magnet high schools are failing to make interracial contact feasible for students. This could have detrimental effects in the long run because if racial isolation is one of the causes of racism, and Whites are continuing to attend racially isolated schools instead of magnet schools, then racism may become more difficult to extinguish. It could also be that the correlation goes in the other direction and that racism causes racial isolation. Either way, having schools that are both desegregated and integrated can help solve both issues of isolation and racial intolerance.

Patricia Gurin from the University of Michigan states that “the presence of diverse students on a campus is a necessary but certainly not sufficient condition to work in a positive manner” (Gurin et al., 18). LAUSD magnet schools therefore need to not only desegregate, but also integrate their students in order to have a racially balanced school and harmonious race relations. It appears that these schools do realize that both desegregation and integration are necessary as seen on the guidelines the district has established on their “Procedures to Establish a New Magnet Program for the 2016-2017 School Year” guide. This guide states that “applications must provide a detailed explanation on how the school plans to address the Five Harms of Racial Isolation: Low Academic Achievement, Low self-esteem, Lack of Access to Post-Secondary Opportunities, Interracial Hostility and Intolerance, and Overcrowded Conditions” (Cole and Muncey, 4). The fact that interracial hostility and intolerance is one of the harms mentioned implies that the district is aware that simply putting students of different races is not enough and that a set plan is needed in order to reduce racial intolerance.

Because racial integration and desegregation are part of the guidelines, it appears that these are still goals of LAUSD magnet schools. This suggests that it may not be that the schools themselves have changing goals. Yet a change in government goals could still be affecting the extent to which magnet schools are able to reach their objectives. Perhaps LAUSD magnet high schools have been limited in their ability to create desegregated schools by the fact that certain cities in Los Angeles have become their own districts.

Conclusion

A possible limitation of the findings could be that for the trend showing that the percentage of White students attending has gone down, there were very few schools in the sample. Data was only available for nine out of the 59 LAUSD magnet high schools. It may be unreasonable to make a generalization from this small data set on demographic changes over time. Yet the data on current racial demographics does tell us that presently very few of these schools can be considered desegregated. It is also still necessary to determine whether the schools that are desegregated are integrated, which is something that future research may answer. Another possible limitation of the study is that the racial demographics of all the cities in LAUSD were not obtained, only those of the cities that had formed separate districts. It may be that some of the cities in the district have similar demographics and home values to those that are not in the district, though it is difficult to imagine that most cities would have such high home values and such high percentages of Whites given the heterogeneity of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is said to be a place of diversity, but this diversity is not reflected in LAUSD magnet high schools. Only 22% of these schools had less than 75% minority students. This means that minority students are mostly going to school with other minority students and White students are attending racially isolated schools. The battle for desegregation has not been won. In Los Angeles, students are even more segregated than they were decades ago, perhaps due to the fact that those cities that house White families are the cities that are not part of LAUSD, meaning that they cannot attend magnet schools. Looking at the guidelines for establishing a new magnet school gives the impression that magnet schools in Los Angeles still hold objectives relating to desegregation and integration, but that they are not attaining said objectives. Parents might send their children to magnet schools because they hope their children will be in a diverse environment, and the reality in Los Angeles is that it will be unlikely that the school will actually be racially diverse. Magnet schools present themselves as working hard towards desegregation and integration, but this is not the reality for high school students who attend these schools in Los Angeles. These students are not receiving the benefits that integration brings because the schools have failed them in this sense. It is necessary for LAUSD magnet high schools to put more effort into achieving racial integration so that students who attend these schools can benefit from integration and so that racial relations in society may be improved.

Works Cited

Alkin, Marvin, CA. Research and Evaluation Branch. Los Angeles Unified School District, and Others And. “Evaluation Of The Magnet School Programs.” (1983): ERIC. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.

André-Bechely, Lois. “Finding Space And Managing Distance: Public School Choice In An Urban California District.” Urban Studies (Routledge) 44.7 (2007): 1355-1376. Business Source Complete. Web. 6 May 2016.

“Beverly Hills CA Home Prices & Home Values | Zillow.” Zillow. Web. 06 May 2016.

Cole, Gloria, and Donna Muncey. “Procedure to Establish a New Magnet Program for the 2016-2017 School Year”. 26 March 2014.

Crawford v. Los Angeles Board of Education. 31 University of La Verne Law Review. U.S. Supreme Court. 30 June 1982. Web.

“Census.gov.” Census.gov. Web. 06 May 2016.

“EChoices.” EChoices. Web. 06 May 2016.

ELSI. Web. 06 May 2016.

Frankenberg, Erica, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, and Gary Orfield. The Civil Rights Project. “The Forgotten Choice? Rethinking Magnet Schools in a Changing Landscape”. (2008).Web. eScholarship. 06 May 2016

Gurin, Patricia, Biren A. Nagda, and Gretchen E. Lopez. “The Benefits Of Diversity In Education For Democratic Citizenship.” Journal Of Social Issues 60.1 (2004): 17-34. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 May 2016.

“Hermosa Beach CA Home Prices & Home Values | Zillow.” Zillow. Web. 06 May 2016.

“Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center.” Justia Law. Web. 06 May 2016.

“Los Angeles Unified School District.” LAUSD Maps / Local District Maps 2015. Web. 06 May 2016.

Orfield, Gary, and Cambridge, MA. Harvard Civil Rights Project. “Schools More Separate: Consequences Of A Decade Of Resegregation.” (2001): ERIC. Web. 6 May 2016.

“Palos Verdes Estates CA Home Prices & Home Values | Zillow.” Zillow. Web. 06 May 2016.

“Santa Monica CA Home Prices & Home Values | Zillow.” Zillow. Web. 06 May 2016.

“SIS and SIB Applications Home.” SIS and SIB Applications Home. Web. 06 May 2016. http://search.lausd.k12.ca.us/

Smrekar, Claire, and Ellen B. Goldring. School Choice in Urban America: Magnet Schools and the Pursui

Kate O’ Brien

Professor Mira Debs,

EDST 240: Cities, Suburbs and School Choice

05/06/16

A System of Choice or A System of Control:

Who has the Power in the New Haven Public Choice System?

“Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea that everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.”

– Barack Obama

The Equal Educational Opportunities Act prefaced this quote from President Obama. This Act, signed into law in 1974 declared that all school children are entitled to an equal educational opportunity without regard to race, color, sex, or national origin,” (Pérez, 2011). This increased choice was advocated for urban education reform and improving school quality (Fuller & Elmore, 1996). School choice ideology assumes that with the greater competition between schools through market pressures, students will have improved learning opportunities.  The types of schools available within the school choice program are magnet schools, neighborhood schools, inter-district schools and charter schools.

The Center for Education Reform described the school choice program as one that “include[d] parents who want and deserve the power to choose the best school for their child,”(Allen, 2012). The New Haven Public School Choice Program echoes this ethos in claiming, “There are no admission requirements, tests or prerequisites for our students. We serve special education students, English Language learners, talented and gifted students and everyone else who comes through the lottery to our schools. No student may be denied enrollment because of race, ethnicity or disability.” (The School Choice Process, 2016). Both the Center for Education Reform and The New Haven Public School Choice administrators see school choice as a right for families to make the best education decisions for their own children. The system is idealized to be set up equitably so students are not admitted based on current academic ability or race, ethnicity, or disability.

Although a fair and equitable choice system should have the objective to create the conditions for all parents to make informed decisions about where their children attend school (Cookson, 1994), one is forced to recognize that social class and parent education play a fundamental role in succeeding in the school choice process. When parental involvement in the school choice process is examined, parents of a lower social or education class or non-native English speakers, are at a disadvantage within the school choice process.

School choice has been described as “the illusion of opportunity without the reality,” (Orfield & Frankenberg 2013). The New Haven Public School Choice System is a complicated system for parents. Class field notes gathered by EDST 240: Cities, Suburbs and School students from School Choice Fairs at James Hillhouse High School, East Rock Magnet School and Wilbur Cross High School describe the parent confusion of the choice process. Most of the Yale students noted the “Application Assistance” booth was the busiest booth at the fair, which suggests that parents at the fair had more questions about the choice process, rather than about schools within the system. One Yalie overheard a confused parent at the Choice Application Assistance Table ask if this system was a lottery. The representative is reported to have rolled her eyes and replied with a “yes.” and add, “However, we no longer call it a ‘lottery’…the name changed to ‘school selection process,’” (AM, 2016). This incredibly brief interaction is a synopsis of a system that is not transparent to parents and one that administration is obviously weary of explaining to confused parents.

The choice system has been accused of acting as a form of class-based segregation. Madeline Pérez quotes research from Morse and Davenport’s 1990, School Choice: “The New Improved Sorting” in stating that each step of the admissions process “highlights the many points in which formal requirements, informal requirements, staff discretion, and/or student initiative affected the final result, typically to the detriment of equitable admissions,” (Pérez, 2011). Moore and Davenport quote critics of school choice process in referring to the choice model as the “new improved sorting machine” that “has become the new form of segregation,” (Moore & Davenport 1990).

 Families’ familiarity and comfort levels with navigating the school system are linked to class-based experiences, resources and support they received from their child’s current school (Pérez, 2011). For instance, the admissions process to the school choice program is a complex process that heavily depends on parent involvement.The admissions process is typically made up of 5 stages: recruitment and information gathering, applications, screening, selection of students offered placement and final student acceptance, (Moore & Davenport 1990).  Each of these stages is a moment in which capital and class intersect. As parent’s  influence in the school applications process is shaped by the social, cultural, and economic capital they have been provided or denied, (Pérez, 2011), this system is not an accessible nor transparent system for those of low social, cultural and economic capital. It was also noted that the choice system was developed on “middle class expectations, but applied to a system comprised primarily of working class and poor families of color,” (Pérez, 2011). This element of the system takes away the choice aspect, as it demands that parents have a thorough understanding of the system and in particular the application.

The actual school choice application is also thought to put parents of a lower social class at a disadvantage.  The New Haven Public School Choice Program application process (see appendix) is outlined in seven steps on the New Haven Public School Choice website, (The School Choice Process, 2016). It is worth noting that this application assumes that parents have an understanding of the schools and what the schools are expecting of them.  Step one reads: “Identify your child’s interests and talents” yet there is no listed explanation as what a “child’s interests and talents” should look like, thus parents with no prior education experience are left with no guidance. The application also assumes that parents can “explore school options by attending Expos, Open Houses and Community Events.” This assumes that parents have access to transport, will not be working during these hours, have babysitting options for these times. The New Haven Public School Choice system also makes several references to a wait listing process and does so in a manner that assumes parents are familiar with the waitlist process. It simply states that parents will receive “a waitlist notification,” and if a seat opens up, they will be notified. This prompt may aggravate the confusing application. This application to enter the choice system is just one component of the overall process and it is a complex process in itself. The New Haven Public School Choice Program application is not an accessible or feasible process for many families.

Parents of  certain social classes (i.e. higher socioeconomic status, college educated, higher income) are much better equipped when it comes to approaching the school choice process. There are several books, articles and blogs dedicated to making the best school choice for a child. However, much of this advice is literature targeted at a very specific audience.  For example, newspapers stereotypically targeted at a middle class audience, The New York Times, The Guardian and TIME have printed several articles offering school choice advice over the past few years. Parents within a higher socioeconomic class are more inclined to read such articles. An example of one such article was written by Andrew Rotherham in 2o11. In his article, Rotherham states that TIME specifically asked him to write how he and his wife (both of whom work in education,) chose schools for their children. He claims that many of his colleagues had already asked his advice, as if he had some “secret education-analyst methodology,” (Rotherham, 2011). It would seem that there is a demand for these sorts of articles from  readers of these cultivated newspapers. I could not find such niche articles or school advice of the same calibre in tabloid newspapers that are stereotypically targeted at lower socioeconomic classes. There are little to no alternative articles that are made accessible to families of lower social classes, putting them at a disadvantage to their higher class counterparts,

Parents of a higher socioeconomic status may also be more likely to find loopholes in the choice system. The New Haven Independent published an article, “Parents learn Hooker School Admission Tricks,” (Bailey, 2009). The article describes how a Yale faculty member, Hong Zheng, educated herself on how to get their rejected child a seat in Hooker School, one of the most coveted middle schools in Connecticut. She discovered that when a spot opened up in the school, it was offered to the first parent who claimed it. Ms. Zheng then created a network of parents in Hooker to alert her to upcoming withdrawals of any current students. She also rented a second property on Prospect Street when she found out that her house on 107 Cottage Street lies outside the Hooker District. Ms. Zheng’s show a mother’s determination to get the best possible schooling for their child, but they also show an educated and wealthy parent’s attempts at securing this school. The comments section on this article show a parent population who see the injustice in this system claiming that “it’s about who you know [to get into schools]” and that “years of favoritism and poor judgments have led to this, and without a transparent system it will never improve.” Online comments are obviously not an accurate representation of the public opinion, yet these comments come from New Haven parents who see an injustice in the system their child is a part of. There was an evident lack of transparency within the New Haven school choice process in 2009.

 In her book, entitled “Social class differences in family-school relationships: The importance of cultural capital,” Annette Lareau claims “Middle class culture provides parents with more information about schooling and promotes social ties among parents in the school community. This furthers the interdependence between home and school. Working class culture, on the other hand, emphasizes kinship and promotes independence between the spheres of family life and schooling,” (Laureau, 1987). This approach is not realistic for so many of New Haven families who are not a part of this middle-class culture. Madeline Pérez echoed this sentiment as she reported on how parents at Gracie school, a wealthy New York City public high school assumed that all parents knew how to strategically navigate the system. In commenting on her apartment in the Upper East Side, one parent remarked “People who are considering moving into my building — they don’t know you and they will approach you in the elevator and ask about the schools. If you are smart — you ask! You ask the realtor, “How’s the school system?” Sometimes people pay much more for a house and it’s because they may have a better guarantee to the good schools…” (Pérez, 2011). There is a disconnect in mindset and understanding that people with different backgrounds may have different experiences navigating school choice. The very nature of being of a middle class (or higher) status puts parents at an advantage in the school system by virtue of who they know. Parents of a lower class may not have access to the same social capital.

 Evidently a parent’s lack of understanding of the school choice process is a limiting factor for their children’s applications. In their book, “School Choice: The New Improved Sorting Machine,” Moore and Davenport report the study of public high school choice that found “Most families did not understand the complex process. The majority of the students either did not apply, or filled out forms with little understanding of how the process works or of strategies that can help improve their chances into schools they are interested in attending,” (Moore & Davenport, 1990). These children’s parents are uninformed and not educated as to how the system works, thus leaving the children unattended to navigate the school choice system alone.

 The dependence on a child to navigate this complicated system alone was reported from the 2016 New Haven School Choice Fair as many students were observed directing their parents through the hall and explaining the process to them. One particular family was observed having their 2nd grade son choose his school independently. The mother asked him which school was his favorite, and  asked him to rate his top four choices, so she would know when she had to “fill out the form,” (AC, 2016).  

The parent’s own education of the choice process plays a fundamental role in navigating the system and will substantially impact the chances of the child(ren) benefitting from the school choice process. There are clear barriers stopping non-native English speakers from getting the most out of the choice system. The Comité de Padres Latinos/Committee of Latin Parents (COPLA) was created in Carpinteria, California, 1985 in response to the struggle that Spanish-speaking parents faced in understanding the American education system. The organization ran (and continues to run) interactive workshops for Latino and Spanish speaking parents to discuss the obstacles they feel prevents them for advocating for better schooling for their children. The recurring named obstacles are, “We don’t have English… We don’t have transport… We’re afraid to go to schools by ourselves…” (Delgado-Gaitan, 2001).

The New Haven Choice program, like the Carpinteria School District is failing to adequately serve non-English speakers.  At the New Haven school choice fair that the EDST 240 Yale students attended, there was very little printed information leaflets available in languages other than English, despite the fact that 16.8% of New Haven’s population was Hispanic or Latino in 2014 (Census 2014). Yale students observed very few Spanish conversations between parents and administrators at the school fairs, despite hearing many families themselves conversing in Spanish. It was also noted that there was very little written information available in Spanish. There was one universal style flyer at every school stall,  which was adapted, to suit each school. In the center of the flyer was a place for a student photo in the middle surrounded by different bullet points: “How to know (named school) is Right for your Child”, “Unique Ways Your Child Can Grow and Learn Here,” the school logo, slogan, photos and contact information. The lack of literature in other languages available at the choice fair may deter non-English speakers from attending the fair in the first place. If what was observed at the fair was the extent of the information available to Spanish speaking families to make their school choice from, then the New Haven School Choice system is not doing enough to help non-English speaking families through the complicated process.

In their concluding comments Orfield and Frankenberg defiantly claim “Choice systems that ignore social stratification have failed because they fundamentally misconstrue both the choices the market provides and the ability of people in a very unequal society to make equal use of choice.” They warn that choice systems can intensify inequality. Madeline Pérez echoes this comment in her dissertation proclaiming a school will only “fulfill its espoused theory of ensuring choice and equity when educational administrators cease to operate a process that serves a majority of low-income people of color based solely on white middle-class assumptions and redesign appropriately.” However, despite this apparent inequality in the choice system in New Haven and nationally, there is hope on the horizon for the school choice program.                                                            

Different school choice programs across the nation have recently began adopting “weighted lotteries.” These programs work by assigning some applicants a preference based on “educational risk factors [such as income or English language learner status] or geography,” (Tegeler & Potter, 2016).  The Department of Education defines weighted lotteries as “lotteries that give preference to one set of students over another,” and in 2014, this department listed the formal conditions in which weighted lotteries can be used. One named condition was “To give slightly better chances for admission to all or a subset of educationally disadvantaged students if state law permits the use of such weighted lotteries,” (Baum, 2015).  The weighted lottery system ensures that the applications from children of families with little or no English and/or low socioeconomic status will be weighted in the choice process.

Implementing weighted lotteries into the school choice process offers a solution to the inequality within the application process. Weighted lotteries have been reported to ensure racial and socioeconomic diversity in many schools, such as Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, Community Roots Charter School in Brooklyn, Larchmont Charter School in LA and Citizens of the World also in LA (Tegeler & Potter, 2016).These lotteries are evidently ensuring that no child is left behind because of the race, education or socioeconomic status of their parent.   

 Efforts have been made online to make the process more accessible and less daunting for parents. In 2009,The Cities Suburbs & Schools Project at Trinity College created SmartChoices, a website listing all public school options for parents and students in the Hartford area, (the website ran from 2009-2014).  The website was created and made available in English and in Spanish. (Orfield & Frankenberg). Yet although this website did a good job of creating a space for the condensed information, just how accessible was this information to all parents? Jack Dougherty, one of website’s founders, highlighted that a website alone “cannot bridge the digital divide,” as not all parents have access to or understanding of the Internet. However, Dougherty et al also highlighted how this “digital divide” can be conquered. In providing a short time period of one on one support, Dougherty and his team saw that parents quickly understood the choice process and this understanding greatly influenced parents’ decision making in the choice process (Orfield & Frankenberg 2013). However, computers are available in most community libraries. Now the final piece to bridging the digital divide is providing technological workshops to help parents navigate online support, like the SmartChoices website.

Although non-native English speaking parents face a challenge in understanding and applying to the school choice system, there are programs in place that could potentially remove this barrier. The Comité de Padres Latinos/Committee of Latin Parents (COPLA) was created in Carpinteria, California, 1985 to provide a voice for the Latino community within schools (Delgado-Gaitan, 2001). The organization had an established voice in Carpinteria’s schools and community politics. Through continuous conversations with the schooling community, parents and school administrators transformed policies and practices for Spanish-speaking children. . COPLA has provided an example of Spanish-speaking families recognizing their rights and responsibilities in the school community and entering conversations with administrators to attempt to transform policies.

Non-English speaking families can also be assisted in the choice process through simply providing them with relevant school choice information in their native language. The SmartChoices Project conducted in Hartford within “The Cities Suburbs & Schools Project” at Trinity College found that an overwhelming two-thirds of a sample of  non native English speaking parents either clarified or changed their top-ranked school after receiving help and guidance in their preferred language (Orfield & Frankenberg 2013). When the information was not available to them in their native language, parents were not capable of making the best decisions for their own children.

The choice debate is set to continue to split the nation. Some believe the choice system will result in educational equity for all and some believe it will re-stratify the education system, further separating the rich from the poor. However understanding the process is a key aspect of succeeding within it and research suggests that parents are not being supported to understand the choice program. The system of school choice in New Haven has shown that it has a sorting and segregating function which can favor parents with the most time and capacity to engage with a complicated system. New Haven children are not being left behind as a result of not getting their first choice within the system but rather they are being left behind when they are not aware of how to make the choice within the system. These children and their families are the ones who slip through the cracks. Choice reform is complicated and its solutions may be expensive, but we will pay a far higher cost in ignoring its value or betting on the cheap. There are solutions to the inequity of the choice process, and they must be availed.

If the choice process is made more accessible to parents regardless of social class, language or education then as a nation we can embody President Obama’s words in that “Where you start should not determine where you end up.“ to ensure that none of our children slip through the cracks of the School Choice System.

Bibliography

Allen, J. (2012, May 29th). School Choice Programs. The New York      Times, pp. A22

AM, (2016) EDST 240: Cities, Suburbs & School Choice, Spring 2016 Field Notes at  James Hillhouse High School, East Rock Magnet   School and Wilbur Cross High School

Bailey, Melissa. “Parents Learn Hooker School Admission Tricks | New Haven Independent.” New Haven Independent. 16 June 2009. Web. 17 Apr. 2016. Retrieved from <http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/parents_learn_hooker_school_admission_tricks/>.

Baum, L. (2015) State Laws on Weighted Lotteries and Enrollment Practices: Executive Summary. National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

Census: High school graduate or higher, percent of persons age 25 years , 2010-2014. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2016, from http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/EDU635214/09009

Cookson, P. W. (1994). School choice: The struggle for the soul of American education. Yale University Press.

Delgado-Gaitan, C. (2001). The power of community: Mobilizing for family and schooling. Rowman & Littlefield.

Fuller, B. F., & Elmore, R. (1996). Who Chooses? Who Loses? Culture, Institutions and the Unequal Effects of School Choice. Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027 (paperback: ISBN-0-8077-3537-X; clothbound: ISBN-0-8077-3538-8)..

Lareau, A. (1987). Social class differences in family-school relationships: The importance of cultural capital. Sociology of education, 73-85.

Moore, D. R. & Davenport, S. (1990). School Choice: The New Improved Sorting

  Machine. In W. L. Boyd & H. J. Walberg (Eds.). Choice in Education: Potential and Problems. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing.

Orfield, G., & Frankenberg, E. (2013). Educational delusions?: Why choice can deepen inequality and how to make schools fair. Univ of California Press.

Pérez, M. (2011). “Two Tales of One City: A Political Economy of the New York City Public High School Admissions Process.” PhD Dissertation, Department of Education, City University of New York, New York.

Rhodes, Anna and Stefanie DeLuca. 2014. “Residential Mobility and School Choice among Poor Families.” Pp. 137-66 in Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools, edited by K. Goyette and A. Lareau. New York: Russell Sage.

Rotherham, A. (2011, August 04). How to Pick a Good School. Time. Retrieved May 06, 2016, from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2086809,00.html

Schneider, M., Teske, P., Marschall, M., Mintrom, M., & Roch, C. (1997). Institutional arrangements and the creation of social capital: The effects of public school choice. American Political Science Review, 91(01), 82-93.

Tegeler, P., & Potter, H. (2016). The voice of community development. Retrieved April 19, 2016, from http://www.shelterforce.org/article/4288/charter_schools_gentrification_and_weighted_lotteries/

The School Choice Process. (2016). Retrieved April 23, 2016, from http://www.newhavenmagnetschools.com/index.php/whats-the-process/the-application-process

Weininger, Elliot.2014. “School and Neighborhood Choice: Sources of Information.” in Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools, edited by K. Goyette and A. Lareau. New York: Russell Sage.

Appendix

New Haven Public School Choice Application

1.    Identify your child’s interests and talents
2.   Explore school options by attending Expos, Open Houses and Community Events
3.   For K-8 schools, choose up to 4 Schools that best fit your child’s interests and educational needs. For grade 9-12, choose up to 5 schools and select the Academy of your neighborhood-zoned school. Use our School Choice Worksheet on our wrap-around cover.
4.   Apply: complete the School Choice Placement online or paper application on or before March 13, 2016.
5.    Receive Placement/Waitlist Notification: by email – April 12th: Mailed by April 15th
6.   If placed, Accept/Decline placement by May 6th. If waitlisted, Choice Office will notify you if a seat becomes available.
7.   Complete or confirm registration with Choice and Enrollment Office at 54 Meadow Street by May 6th.

Introduction

The popular TV series “Black-ish” shows the everyday lives of the Johnsons, a modern middle class black family as they navigate their unique position in a majority white suburb. On one episode of the TV show Black-ish, Bow, the mother of the family, spends her time proving her wealth to a white neighbor by driving around the block in an expensive car and making sure the neighbor knows her earrings are real diamonds (Black-ish, 2016). In another episode, the family awkwardly attempts to conceal their affluence after hiring a black nanny who is from a working class background (Black-ish, 2016). The tension between these incidents demonstrates the complicated place that middle class black families hold. On one hand, there is the desire to cement their financial capability to be among white middle class families. On the other, they are forced to confront their place of privilege within the wider black community. While Black-ish provides a humorous overview of the challenges of a black middle class family, scholarly work on the topic is lacking.

The position of black middle class families is often lost when discussing the intersections between race and class; most of the discourse surrounding socioeconomic statuses is based on the dichotomy between rich and poor, suburban and urban, and black and white. White families are aligned with wealthy, middle class suburbs and black families are examined as they exist in working class urban backgrounds. This defined separation between white and black becomes incredibly important when examining education in the United States. Suburbs are studied as places that give white students access to high achieving schools while urban areas are critiqued for their failure to educate working-class minority students. Efforts to solve educational disparities and integrate schools revolve around these principles. School choice programs are created to bring white students and wealth from suburbs into cities or poor black children into nice, suburban schools. Often overlooked when considering these educational policies and trends is the instance of the black middle class. Where does the black middle class lie in a system where educational and child rearing disadvantages are aligned with both race and class? While limited, existing literature on the demographic suggests that there are variations in approached to raising children related to spatial differences within the black middle class.

Development of the Black Middle Class

The black middle class has developed relatively recently. In the mid-twentieth century, black Americans were given an increasing number of opportunities for upward mobilization due to an increase in available education and professional occupations (Durant, 1986). At this time also, during the Civil Rights Movement, there a push to integrate black Americans into mainstream society which provided more options to perceive higher levels of education and a greater variety of jobs (Durant, 1986). Although securing more rights helped the upward mobilization that gave birth to the black middle class, segregation played an important role in allowing black Americans to be successful. Segregation allowed black professionals, such as politicians and doctors to thrive in areas where they would be fully supported by their community, and thus more successful than they would be in integrated environments where they may face radicalized pushback (Lacy, 2007). The twentieth century also saw an overall increase in the number of professional jobs as the economy developed past an industrial and agriculture focus. This further increased the amount of opportunities and the amount of black professionals increased fourfold between 1950 and 1981 (Durant, 1986). Because of the more recent development compared to the white middle class, the black middle class is set in a position of high income and little wealth. As the black middle class began to develop more steadily in the 1980’s, black families began to accumulate wealth, however, white families were already centuries and thousands of dollars ahead (Fletcher, 2015). In modern times, the net median household wealth for a white middle class family was $141,900 in 2013 compared to only $11,000 for a black middle class family (Reeves, 2013). The lack of wealth puts the black middle class as whole in a precarious position where a job loss, natural disaster, or medical emergency can make a family downwardly mobile, and thus, many black middle class families put a large emphasis on ensuring the future success of their children.

Today, the black middle class is typically considered to be the demographic of black Americans who make over $30,000 annually (Lacy, 2007). However, there are variations within this group, and in Blue-Chip Black, Karyn Lacy makes the distinction between upper middle class black families and lower middle class black families. While both of these groups are technically middle class and relatively wealthy compared to working class black families, they differ wildly from each other. These differences can be related to the locational differences of each group. The distinctions seem to be divided between black middle class families who live in working class black neighborhoods, wealthy white suburbs, and wealthy black suburbs. These different living environments affect the way that black parents choose schools for their children as they attempt to propagate their middle class backgrounds into future generations.

The Black Middle Class in Working Class Neighborhoods

Black middle class families as a whole are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods than white middle class families. On average, black middle class families are three times more likely than white middle class families to reside in a neighborhood where a significant number of inhabitants are in a lower socioeconomic class (Pattillo, 2005). In addition to this, black families at any socioeconomic level tend to live in neighborhoods where they are around other black families (Pattillo, 2005). The combination of these two factors leaves a significant amount of black middle class families in poor, segregated, often urban areas.

These neighborhoods present the black middle class families with a host of problems associated with poor, urban locations, even if the family itself is not poor. These problems include gangs, drug usage, and an increased threat of violence (Lacy, 2007). Impoverished urban neighborhoods also have limited funding for public services such as schools, and thus the educational opportunities in these locations are often subpar compared to wealthier suburbs (Darling-Hammond, 2009). These black middle class families are also more likely to be on the lower end up middle income and less likely to own their own homes; only 52% of black middle class families earning between $30,000 and $49,000 own their homes, compared to 70% of white families in the same income bracket (Lacy, 2007).

While Lacy considers these families lower-middle class, much of the existing literature considers them solidly middle class due to the variation in what is considered a blue collar profession. Many black middle class families in this situation have adults who hold positions such as postal workers or sales clerks (Lacy, 2007). While these positions may allow a family to make more than other working class occupations, these members of the black middle class do not have the same income level as the black upper-middle class who is employed in professions such as doctors and lawyers. These kinds of positions, in comparison to professional positions, also often require that parents work for more hours per week or that both parents work instead of just one. In the late 1970s, 69% of black middle class families (defined by occupation) had wives that were employed compared to only 51.6% of white middle class families (Landry, 1978). These black middle class women also remained in their positions for about 20% more of their married lives than white middle class women (Landry, 1978). While these statistics represent the black middle class in a different time period, the literature of today does not fully cover these differences, and the logic holds true that a family making less money would have to work more.

The differing amount of work time creates an imbalance in time available for child involvement between this group and wealthier black middle class families. In Longing and Belonging by Allison Pugh, an upper-middle class black family is able to reach a high enough single parent income where the mother is able to suspend her profession to stay at home with her children (Pugh, 2009). Parents, typically mothers, who are able to stay home for a significant amount of time are able to dedicate more time and energy to their children’s educational experience. For example, parents who have more open time can make a significant difference at their school within their Parent-Teacher Association which provides a number of services that schools are unable to budget for (Anderson, 2007). Thus, the occurrence of two working parents in this subset of black middle class families puts them at a disadvantage in their children’s education because they are not financially able to dedicate large amounts of time to improving their children’s educational experience.

Within schools the proximity to black majority areas with lower socioeconomic backgrounds makes them less likely to have to the cultural and social capital considered necessary for success, even if they themselves may have a higher income than other families in the area. Children living and going to school in these areas are more likely to spend a greater amount of their time around people who do not have college degrees, especially if this black middle class encompasses occupations such as postal clerks (Lewis, 2003). This puts them at a disadvantage when they themselves are looking to pursue a college education, as they have limited guidance through the process and limited knowledge of college life (Lewis, 2003). Families in these backgrounds also form social networks that are limited to similar black lower-middle class or working class families. Social networks partially determine educational, occupational, and housing choices and opportunities, and because these families do not have access to white middle class or black upper-middle class social networks, they are restricted from forming connections that could lead to increased social mobility (Lewis, 2003).

The black middle class families in these situations have little choice in the educational situation of their children, outside of local school choice initiatives. Parents in this background tend to view private school as a privilege their kids do not need to be given (Lacy, 2007). Instead, they uphold a style of parenting that prides the moral value of work, believing that their children should not be given “a silver spoon” (Lacy, 2007). These parents also have financial barriers to consider in the school choice process. Because of their lower income than other black middle class families, they do not have the extra money to spend on private school if they wish to maintain a middle class life style (Lacy, 2007). This leaves parents with little choice outside of any existing choice system within their neighborhood schools, in which these families would face the same the typical difficulties of these systems, such as not being accepted to their desired choice school. Overall, families in this situation appear function in the same way that other black, urban families function, perhaps with a little more spending money. The same difficulties arise within public education, and the same limitations exist in efforts to eliminate these difficulties.

The Black Middle Class in White Suburbs

Another distinct set of black middle class families reside in white suburbs. Most of these suburbs have been entirely white until the arrival of one or two black families. Until the mid-1970s the black middle class was barred from moving into white suburbs due to de facto segregation and racial real estate practices. This maintained all white and all black suburbs until the first black middle class families were able to move into white environments (Lacy, 2007). Since most black families desire to live around other black families, a large factor of the migration to white middle class suburbs is the lack of an existing black middle class enclave near the desired city for these families to move into (Lucy, 2007). Another factor of moving to white neighborhood is the high quality of schools that usually exist there; black middle class families are aware of what counties have successful public schools and choose their homes accordingly (Pugh, 2009). Living in a white middle class environment gives this subset of the black middle class both the benefits that go along with typical wealthy suburbs and this disadvantages of having to deal with underlying racist practices of the wider white community.

White middle class suburbs offer a number of social, cultural, and economic benefits to the Black families living there. Schools in these areas are well funded, have more qualified teachers, and active legions of family volunteers (Darling-Hammond, 2009). Children from black families in white suburbs are also set up for further success because they learn cultural characteristics of the white upper and middle classes, which are typically favored in American society. For example, black middle class families develop social networks with their white middle class neighbors. These social networks lead to further occupation, housing, and educational opportunities (Lewis, 2003). Black students in white suburbs also have experiences associated with white suburban education, such as going on field trips and having project based learning experiences, which are considered optimal learning experiences in American society (Lewis, 2003). Combined with the economic capital that these families already must posses in order to live in these neighborhoods, the added benefits of socialization with white families creates an environment where middle class black children are prepped to thrive in American society.

The mixing of black families into white spaces also raises several issues. Although black families in majority white neighborhoods do not feel outright rejected by their white peers, they are conscious of their racial identity and how they are perceived in the white world. Middle class black families are constantly aware of racial differences whether they are shopping or picking up their kids from little league practices (Lacy, 2007). They feel as though they must present themselves in the right way in order to avoid white reproach and make their middle class status known (Lacy, 2007). The constant awareness of racial differences extends to the school environment. Parents may feel uncomfortable meeting with school administrators or attending schools events where other parents or even teachers harbor racial biases (Lewis, 2003). Black students in majority in majority white schools also face institutionalized racism. Black boys are the recipients of disciplinary action more frequently and more intensely (Lewis, 2003). Black students may also be tracked or steered into lower level courses, despite displaying high levels of intelligence (Lewis, 2003). While parents do not necessarily want their children to experience these issues, they believe that these instances can help prepare students for the “real world” of the United States (Lacy, 2007). Black parents embrace in white neighborhoods embrace the idea that living among white people will prepare their children for dealing with racism and majority white environments in the future (Pugh, 2009).

Black middle class families that live in mostly white environments must also put a large emphasis on the ability to code switch and be familiar with the cultures associated with both largely black and largely white communities (Lacy, 2007). These families want their children to be exposed to other black children both within and outside of their socioeconomic class. While parents chose to send their kids to predominately white schools, they often made sure their activities outside of school were in a black environments (Pugh, 2009). Parents both signed up children in activities where they would be surrounded by mostly lower class black children and sought out other middle class to upper-middle class black families to have dinners and birthday parties with (Pugh, 2009). Parents were also careful when exposing their kids to different environments so that certain behaviors would only appear in certain places. For example, parents would not want their children to speak African-American Vernacular English if they were around mostly white people (Pugh, 2009). Through this careful management of their children’s activities, they hoped that their kids would be comfortable around black people of all backgrounds, and would easily be able to float between different environments of both white and black children (Pugh, 2009). The black middle class family living in a mostly white environment is used to straddling the border between white and black spaces and they believe their children should be able to do the same. With this goal in mind, they carefully select their schools by choosing to live in certain neighborhoods and choose specific outside of school activities to provide experiences in many different situations.

The Black Middle Class in Wealthy Black Suburbs

To avoid the problems associated with living in a majority white environment, some middle class black families will seek out a majority black middle class neighborhood (Lacy, 2007). Black middle class neighborhoods, such as these developed out of early white flight (Lacy, 2007). As some black families gained wealth earlier in the mid-1900s and moved out of poor urban environments, white families promptly left the neighborhoods they moved into (Lacy, 2007). This left black some black neighborhoods segregated, but wealthy and created black suburbs to rival majority white ones. In these suburbs, black families are most likely in upper income brackets of the middle class, and thus more likely homeowners, which distinguishes them from lower-middle class blacks families who live in working class environments (Lacy, 2007). Owning homes in upper-middle class black neighborhoods puts families in a unique situation where they can begin to accumulate wealth, but where the racial composition of the neighborhood puts them at a disadvantage compared to black families in majority white neighborhoods. Majority black neighborhoods, even middle class ones, are seen as undesirable by white families, who are uncomfortable with the idea of living in a black majority area (Pattillo, 2005). Upper black middle class neighborhoods are also often marketed that way, ensuring that they remain segregated. Real estate agents are aware of people’s preferences towards group mentality and thus lead families to homes that they believe will be easily sold. And so, black middle class families are driven to black middle class suburbs and white middle class families are not (Lacy, 2007). Because white middle class families who represent a large portion of the housing market are reluctant to pursue homes in black neighborhoods, property values tend to fall if a neighborhood becomes majority black and remain low compared to white neighborhoods (Fletcher, 2015). This makes homeownership risky even in wealthy all black neighborhoods and at times contributes to the downward mobilization of some middle class black families in this situation.

Although buying a house in these neighborhoods may be risky, it is desirable, because in this environment black families can be the racial majority in a wealthy area, which is not typical in the black community as a whole. Besides the racial composition, wealthy black neighborhoods function are essentially the same as wealthy white neighborhoods; there are spacious lawns, neighborhood associations, and “block” parties that are held in the lavish cul-de-sacs (Lacy, 2007). They also in a way offer a safe haven for black middle class families and their children to avoid the outside racism. However, once these black professionals and thier leave their wealthy suburbs however, they are still faced with navigating institutionalized racism. Similar to their counterparts in majority white neighborhoods, black parents from these neighborhoods must constantly be aware of how their expressions of emotions are coming across to others in order to avoid being perceived as racial stereotypes (Wingfield, 2007). As black middle class children age, they must also learn the art of presentation in order to maintain positive relationships with white students, teachers, or professors (Wingfield, 2010). Unlike black families who live in white suburbs, there is not as much of an emphasis on learning to navigate the black experience as well as the white experience. These families rely on their majority black neighborhoods, although wealthy, to provide children with the experience of being around black families, and thus they only have a heightened awareness of their class or racial status when they leave their homes to go to work or school, which are often majority white.

Middle class black families in wealthy black suburbs often use school choice as a way to get their children out of public schools. Although these families live in wealthy black neighborhoods themselves, the school districts as a whole are usually not as wealthy compared to white suburbs because they have a closer proximity to poorer black areas (Lacy, 2007). So, these families believe they should send their children to private school to guarantee that the children are being challenged and achieving enough (Lacy, 2007). Unlike lower-middle class black families, these families are able to afford private school while maintaining a middle class life styles (Lacy, 2007). These families believe that their ultimate duty is to ensure that their children will be able to reproduce a similar middle class status in the future (Lacy, 2007). Because of this, they may make concessions, such as avoiding family trips to ensure that their kids are getting the best education possible, even if it is expensive (Lacy, 2007). Black children attending private school still experience the forms of racism that black children attending white suburban schools go through (Lacy, 2007). However, parents often have more power to confront teachers and administrators in private schools. For example, a parent who visited her son’s school saw her son was not being steered into lower math classes was able to confront administrators and get her son moved into a class that was closer to his actual level (Lacy, 2007). In general, he black middle class parents in wealthy black suburbs are less concerned with their children experiencing diversity as those parents in mostly white neighborhoods, but are instead concerned mostly with being able to replicate their middle class status in future generations. Because of these concerns, these parents strive to send their children to private schools where they will be given the best education.

Conclusion

            The existing literature around the black middle class divides the group into distinct groups that make it easier to assess cultural and sociological influences. These divisions also make for a more accurate representation of the black middle class, and the complicated relationship that this demographic has with race and class. By looking at the black middle class by location, a clearer picture can be formed at how being black and middle class is changed by living in white suburbs, wealthy black suburbs, or poorer black neighborhoods. In each of these environments, families have slightly different parenting styles that are represented through their means and choices in childrearing. Though, every black middle class family type functions in a way to attempt to carry on their middle class status to their children. Black middle class families in poor environments do this by instilling the belief in hard work and pushing oneself to the top, although these families are often at a locational disadvantage when preparing their kids for the future. Black middle class families in white neighborhoods strategically aim to put their kids into a number of varied educational situations both inside and outside of school in an attempt to make their kids masters at code switching, which they believe will give them success. Black middle class families in wealthy black neighborhoods tend to give their children whatever is within their means in order to guarantee their future middle class status. This results in a high number of families form this background sending their children to private schools.

Although there are existing literary works that offer an interesting look at the black middle class and the divisions within it in relation to education and childrearing, there are a lot of areas that could be explored. The texts of Pugh and Lacy provided in-depth descriptions for the thoughts concerning race and class of parents while they were already in certain locations, however there could have been more explanations as to whether these resulted from location or lead parents to certain locations. For example, since social networks play a part in housing decisions, do black families that move into white neighborhoods already have white social networks? More exploration also needs to be done on how black middle class families born into the middle class differ from black middle class families whose parents achieved significant upward social mobility. While these studies were mostly about the positions of black families in different middle class environments and thus the discussion was centered on the experience of the black families, it would be interesting to learn more about how these families are received by their wider environments. How do wealthy white students and working class black students consciously perceive wealthy black peers? And, how do the benefits of integration come into play when they are based solely on race and not class? Although the existing literature provided a basis of information, more work on the sociology of middle class black families needs to be done, especially as this demographic increases in size and importance in the future.

Sources

Anderson, Kellie J., & Minke, Kathleen (2007). Parent Involvement in Education: Toward an Understanding of Parent’s Decision Making. The Journal of Education Resource, Vol. 100, No. 5, p. 311-323

Black-ish (2016). Internet Movie Database. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3487356/

Darling-Hammond, Linda (2010). The Flat World and Education. New York, US: Teacher’s College Press

Durant, Thomas J., & Louden, Joyce S. (1986). The Black Middle Class in America: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Phylon, Vol. 47, No. 4, p. 253-263

Fletcher, Michael (2015). A Shattered Foundation: African Americans who bought homes in Prince George’s have watched their wealth vanish. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/01/24/the-american-dream-shatters-in-prince-georges-county/

Lacy, Karyn (2007). Blue-Chip Black. Berkeley, US: University of California Press.

Landry, Bart & Tendrek, Margaret P. (1978). The Employment of Wives in the Black Middle Class. Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 40, No. 4, p. 787-797

Lewis, Amanda E., & Bluebond-Langner, Myra (2003). Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities. New Brunswick, NJ, USA: Rutgers University Press.

Pattillo, Mary (2005). Black Middle Class Neighborhoods. Annual Review Sociology. Vol. 31, p. 305-329

Pugh, Allison (2009). Longing and Belonging. Berkeley, US: University of California Press.

Reeves, Richard V., & Rodrigue, Edward (2015). Five Bleak Facts on Black Opportunity. Brookings Institution. Retrieved from http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2015/01/15-mlk-black-opportunity-reeves

Wingfield, Adia H. (2007). The Modern Mammy and the Angry Black Man: African American Professionals’ Experience with Gendered Racism in the Workplace. Race, Gender & Class, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (2007), p. 196-212

Wingfield, Adia H. (2010). Are Some Emotions Marked “Whites Only?” Racialized Feeling Rules in Professional Workplaces. Social Problems, Vol. 57, No. 2, p. 251-268

Introduction: Success Academy’s Recent Appearance in the News

The New York Times headline on October 29, 2015 “At a Success Academy Charter School, Singling Out Pupils Who Have ‘Got to Go’” has spurred disputes between parties from a diverse collection of fields. Recognized as “the high-performing charter school network in New York City,” Success Academy is presently being accused of “weeding out weak or difficult students” (Taylor, 2015). In reference to the newspaper article mentioned, Candido Brown, a former principal at a Success Academy school, articulates his reasoning for his creation of the ‘Got to Go’ list. He shares: “I felt I couldn’t turn the school around if these students remained” (Taylor, 2015). Thus, the removal of certain students may be interpreted as a “big win” for Success Academy (Taylor, 2015). Both former and current administrators within the Success Academy network detailed another tactic used to encourage students to remove themselves from such schools. Specifically, they “talked about suspending students or calling parents into frequent meetings as ways to force parents…or prompt them to withdraw their children” (Taylor, 2015). Moreover, Brown threatened to call the police on students who persistently misbehaved (Schneider, 2016). As a result, a group of parents filed the lawsuit Olgundiran et al. versus Success Academy Fort Greene et al. for the “emotional distress” such threats caused in both parents and targeted students (Schneider, 2016). In comparison to the overwhelmingly negative reactions to the “Got to Go” list, “At Success Academy, a Stumble in Math and a Teacher’s Anger on Video” (Taylor, 2016) has generated responses both in support of and in contrast to the teacher’s behavior demonstrated in the video.

In her latest newspaper article regarding Success Academy, Taylor (2016) captures the sensational story of an assistant teacher who secretly filmed her colleague, Charlotte Dial, rip a first grade student’s paper in half and angrily order the student to retreat to the “‘calm-down chair’ and sit.” Dial proceeds with, “There’s nothing that infuriates me more than when you don’t do what’s on your paper” (Taylor, 2016). In defense of Success Academy’s “rip and redo” motto (Taylor, 2016), founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz expresses arguments for and against Dial’s practice. On the one hand, Moskowitz affirms that teachers should not address students in manners they would not use in front of students’ parents (Taylor, 2016). On the other hand, she claims that Dial “so desperately wants her kids to succeed and to fulfill their potential” (Taylor, 2016), even if it involves driving the student to tears. While Moskowitz has never personally witnessed a teacher make a student cry, “children cry a lot. Olympic athletes, when they don’t do well, they sometimes cry. It’s not the end of the world” (Taylor, 2016). Jessica Reid Sliweski, a former teacher and assistant principal at Success Academy, voices the following: “I felt sick about the teacher I had become, and I no longer wanted to be part of an organization where adults could so easily demean children under the guise of ‘achievement’” (Taylor, 2016).

In response to comments that mirrored Sliweski’s, a pool of seven parents of Success Academy students gathered and projected their perceptions of Dial’s (mis)behavior.

In the “Success Academy Parents Talk to New York Times” Youtube video, an overarching theme that binds the parents’ views is that the brief, sixty second video clip of Dial’s controversial interaction with her student is not representative of who Dial really is. As one parent declares, “That’s one small moment in time” (SuccessAcademies, 2016). Similar to Moskowitz’s response, a second parent suggests that “the rest of the video sounds like me with my children…it’s a tough love thing…and when my son finally brings it to me, the hug and the love is there and he knows it” (SuccessAcademies, 2016). The second parent’s comment  establishes the close connection that should exist between the adults that play influential roles in children’s lives, principally parents and teachers. Carly Ginsberg, another former Success Academy teacher, paints the disturbing exchange between a “lead teacher” and a student (Taylor, 2016); such an exchange may challenge the “tough love” parental role parents in the Youtube video describe. Ginsberg illustrates that the lead teacher “made a girl who had stumbled reciting a math problem cry so hard that she vomited” (Taylor, 2016). She includes, “It felt like I was watching child abuse. If this were my kindergarten experience, I would be traumatized” (Taylor, 2016). Despite such recollections, another parent in the Youtube video offers that “they [Success Academy] demand excellence and they get excellence, and that doesn’t happen in most other schools” (SuccessAcademies, 2016). Thus, the purpose of this project is to explore the underlying assumptions and consequences of the No Excuses model from the perspectives of Black educators at schools that exercise such No Excuses practices.

What Are Charter Schools? What Makes Them No Excuses?

In her The Death and Life of the Great American School System, author Diane Ravitch discusses the historical arguments for and against school vouchers and school choice. Ravitch utilizes Milton Friedman’s (1955) article, “The Role of Government in Education,” and finds that school vouchers grant families with an equal amount of governmental funds “so every student could attend a school of choice” (Ravitch, 2010). A type of school students could choose to attend are charter schools. Viewed as “the jewels of the school choice movement,” charter schools are “expected to work on the cutting edge of research and knowledge, not to replicate what others are doing” (Ravitch, 2010, p.122). For an institution to become a charter school, an organization may choose to apply for a three to five year charter to collect public funding (Ravitch, 2010). One of the major requirements charter schools must satisfy in order to receive such public financial support is to “meet certain minimum requirements and academic targets” (Ravitch, 2010). Thus, charter schools experience considerable amounts of pressure to meet and exceed written expectations, to ensure their continual receipt of public funding and charter to operate.

You may be wondering: what exactly are No Excuses charter schools anyway? To begin, it is essential to realize that not all charter schools function on a No Excuses model. In his “The No-Excuses Charter School Movement,” blogpost writer Max Bean synthesizes the distinctive characteristics of such schools and proposes the following six features that encapsulates most, if not all, of them: i) high behavioral and academic expectations for students ii) unambiguous disciplinary codes iii) additional time on academics iv) college preparatory curriculum v) creation and promotion of school culture and community values and vi) exclusive policies to hire and retain exceptional teachers. From the list aforementioned, the first two categories most closely align with this paper’s focus. Bean argues that in the eyes of No Excuses charter schools, “to lower expectations…would be to give up on a student, to say to her, ‘We don’t expect you to learn what others learn; we don’t expect you to behave in school…your circumstances make you incapable of academic achievement and success in life’” (Bean). The “circumstances” Bean alludes to are the typically low-income, urban environments where, at one charter management organization, 59% of students are African-American, 36% are Hispanic, and 87% qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch, stem from (Ash, 2013).

Do Student Outcomes Reflect Stated Goals?

No Excuses charter schools “are mission-driven, built around a unifying vision” (Finn, Manno, & Vanourek, 2000). The belief of many of the charter management organizations include statements, such as, “…all children, regardless of race or economic status, can succeed if they have access to a great education” (Achievement First Home Page). Achievement First, a charter management organization formally established in 2003 to expand the exemplary practices of Amistad Academy, a small, New Haven charter school founded in 1999 (Achievement First Home Page: Our Mission and Vision) has delivered on such promises. Stationed in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island, Achievement First published the following data of their students’ performance on state examinations at the elementary, middle, and high school levels in 2013:

Altogether, the data presented above depicts the extraordinary state examination results of Achievement First students, in comparison to similar students attending non-Achievement First schools in neighboring districts. To reinforce such results, in New York City for example, Achievement First students are “within 4 percentage points of Rye, N.Y., an affluent town in Westchester County” (Achievement First Home Page: Results). Because such charter schools inculcate their students with an urgency to perform as well, or better than, their affluent counterparts, such a statement warrants celebration because it proves that they are achieving their stated goals.

Despite the academic victories of Achievement First schools, some individuals have challenged the integrity behind such examination statistics. One figure is Diane Ravitch herself, who claims that “charters avoid students with high needs…because they fear that such students will depress their test scores” (Ravitch, 2010, p.134). To intensify this conversation, others have argued that although such schools fulfill their goal of getting one hundred percent of students into a four year college or university, this percentage is colored by information left publicly unannounced. In “Amistad Sends 30 To College, ‘Loses’ 23” (2013), author Melissa Bailey details an annual event that Achievement First Amistad High School hosts, known as “Senior Signing Day.” Senior Signing Day provides graduating seniors with a platform to announce which college or university they will attend and retell “dramatic stories of overcoming death in the family, gangs, and gun violence” (Bailey, 2013). For each of the thirty seniors who presented at the 2013 Senior Signing Day, “another was ‘lost’ along the way” (Bailey, 2013). Questions such as, “What happened to those ‘lost’ 23?” “Why did Amistad High School not work for them?,” have been wrestled with by Achievement First educators, parents, community members, and students themselves. From a list of “unacceptable departures” Chris Bostock, former principal of Amistad High School, drafts, the first relates to a parent who removed her child from the school “due to restrictive school culture” (Bailey, 2013). Such a restriction is symptomatic of the high behavioral expectations and explicit disciplinary responses to infractions of rules.

To What Extent Do No Excuses Charter Schools’ Disciplinary Practices Cultivate College-Ready Students?

A motto that resounds in the classrooms and hallways of No Excuses charter schools resembles the following: to get students to and through college. To maintain elevated college persistence rates, majority of the No Excuses charter high schools hire several College Success Counselors (and the like), individuals appointed to provide alumni with continuous support throughout their college journeys. Currently, from the one hundred percent of Amistad High School graduates who were accepted into a two or four year college, seventy-four percent of them have persisted or graduated in the 2015-2016 academic year (Achievement First).

Another charter management organization, known as KIPP (The Knowledge is Power Program), has revealed the percentage of alumni who have graduated from college within six years. The outcomes for KIPP students, in comparison to low-incomes students across the United States, are highlighted in the visual below:

The most obvious similarity between the visual above and the academic performance of Achievement First students on their state examinations (previously presented) is that students within these No Excuses charter schools generally outperform their peers in local non-charter public schools. Despite the striking difference in the percentage of KIPP students who enter college (eighty-six percent) in comparison to other low-income students across the United States (forty-five percent), the datum most alarming is the percentage of KIPP students who graduate from college (forty-two percent), in comparison to the percentage of students who entered college. What are explanations for the dramatic decrease in the number of KIPP students who got through college? In her “The Paradox of Success at a No-Excuses School” (2015), Joanne W. Golann incorporates the perspectives of students discussing the extent to which their school, in particular the behavioral expectations and disciplinary practices, are college-preparatory.

The disconnect between the stated purposes of the No Excuses behavioral expectations, disciplinary repercussions, and students’ perceptions of them is substantial. In her introduction, Golann (2015) captures the experience of an eighth grade student, named Alexis, who was housed in detention — as opposed to participating in the school’s snow tubing field trip — due to garnering a certain number of behavioral offenses, which automatically disqualified her from attending the trip. Alexis projects the following statement: “…you’re not prepping us for college–you’re disciplining us, like you don’t have detention in college. You don’t have to wear a uniform in college. You don’t have to walk in straight lines in college” (Golann, 2015). As Golann reflects, while such expectations may be necessary to get students through high school, they may not help students transition into the “college student role” (Golann, 2015). To supplement Golann’s opinion, a college counselor at a similar school expresses the following concern: “…my biggest fear is that these kids are going to go to college and go crazy and like party all the time and not go to class…while some students were doing well in the college courses, others were failing, not having developed the independence to take responsibility for their own work” (Golann, 2015). While the rigid behavioral expectations and prescribed disciplinary practices at such schools are well-intended, they may fail to instill in students the character traits necessary to excel in college settings. If such disciplinary practices are not benefitting each student, then what are they doing? Are there broader significances of such practices that remain hidden from the eye?

Disciplinary Practices Used to “Control” Black and Brown Bodies

A leading vocalist against the disciplinary measures implemented in No Excuses charter schools, Ramon Griffin draws similarities between them and historical practices used to colonize “inferior” groups of people. A former Dean of Students at a charter school and a Black educator himself, Griffin perceived the disciplinary practices at the school through a “postcolonial theory” lens (Griffin, 2014)). He articulates that his daily schedule “consisted of running around chasing Black ladies to see if their nails were polished…or following men to make sure that their hair wasn’t styled naturally as students were not able to wear their hair in uncombed afro styles…” (Griffin, 2014). In response to not allowing students to embrace their “uncombed afro styles” while at school, some charter school educators argue that such a physical presentation can distract other students and/or not prepare them for the professional image they will need to adopt in the future. However, an influential Black Martinique-born revolutionary, Frantz Fanon, would vehemently disagree with such reasoning (Lazarus, 1999).

A famous line that Fanon published in 1961 reads as follows: “Colonialism wants everything to come from it” (Griffin, 2014). After meditating on it, Griffin translates the statement into the charter school he previously worked in. He reflects that “colonizers delegitimize the knowledge, experience, and cultures of the colonized, and establish policy and practice that will always confirm the colonial status quo” (Griffin, 2014). In other words, the “colonizers” represent the predominantly white educators leading the No Excuses charter school movement, while the “colonized” symbolize the Black and Brown students who house such schools. Griffin furthers his analysis and shares that “the systems and procedures seemingly did not care about the Black children and families they served. They were suffocating and meant to socialize students to think and act a certain way” (Griffin, 2014). The term “suffocating” not only illuminates the detrimental effects such practices may have on Black and Brown children, but it suggests that if such children fail to comply with the prescribed rules both in school and in society, they will end up “suffocating” and suffering from broader eternal consequences.

Inherent in such practices is the idea of No Excuses, which implies that despite any outstanding circumstances, Black and Brown children who violate them will still receive their forewarned punishments. In “An Open Letter to Teachers and Staff at No Excuses Charter Schools,” Griffin (2016) questions educators on their [supposed] understandings of the disciplinary practices. Griffin argues that some of the practices “punished students for being poor,” since many were castigated “for not having items school leaders knew their families couldn’t afford” (Griffin, 2016). Additionally, Griffin offers potential extenuating circumstances that should immunize students from receiving punishments. Such circumstances include “a kid who has three younger siblings he has to care for, clean up, help with homework…a kid who has witnessed his mother being shot by his father…” According to Griffin, such a student “has a legitimate excuse not to walk on a line, talk to anybody or participate in class” (Griffin, 2016). Despite the discomfort many educators may feel about such practices, they are — in a way — conditioned to not challenge them. When such educators were students themselves, they were encouraged to “be critical, to take risks, to disagree, to not conform…” (Griffin, 2016); however, “they are trained to instill these opposite values in youth of color, even punishing students for being critical or showing emotion” (Griffin, 2016). Overall, such educators “don’t know how to push back critically and meaningfully without being disciplined or even losing their jobs” (Griffin, 2016). To what extent will such educators, specifically Black educators, compromise their beliefs to not jeopardize their job security?  

Does a “Hidden Curriculum” Exist Underneath Similar Disciplinary Practices?

From their Schooling in Capitalist America (1976), Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis coined the phrases correspondence principle and hidden curriculum, which are theories in regards to the operations of the education and workforce systems in the United States. Particularly, Bowles and Gintis (1976) observed that schools praised students differently depending on if their behaviors aligned with the future occupations society expected them to go into. As they claimed, “…schools prepare people for adult work rules by socializing people to function well and without complaint in the hierarchical structure of the modern corporation” (Bowles and Gintis, 2002, p.1).

In her “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” (1980), Jean Anyon navigated through five elementary schools to determine whether such theories apply to schools today. From her fieldwork, Anyon discovered that in schools where the majority of students stem from working class backgrounds, “work is following the steps of a procedure…work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps” (Anyon, 1980). In other words, students from working class backgrounds are congratulated for their “docility and obedience” (Anyon, 1980). In affluent schools, on the other hand, “the products of work should not be like anybody else’s and should show individuality” (Anyon, 1980). As Anyon confirms through her research, there are deeper sociological forces that differentially shape the educational experiences of students from dissimilar socioeconomic backgrounds. In his “‘Tuck in That Shirt!’ Race, Class, Gender and Discipline in an Urban School” (2005), Edward Morris applies such theories to the practices of a middle school in Texas. Throughout his observations, Morris noted that African-American female students were not viewed as being “ladylike” and “baggy and over-sized clothing will not be allowed” (Morris, 2005). Moreover, Morris converses with a Black male teacher who notes, “Like the black girls here — they lack social skills. The way they talk, it’s loud and combative. They grow up in these rough neighborhoods, and that’s how they act to survive” (Morris, 2005). Thus, “the hidden curriculum tacitly teaches students unspoken lessons about their race, class, and gender and often manifests in how schools regulate their students’ bodies” (Morris, 2005). While educators at such schools do not overtly disclose the hidden curriculum underlying their practices, students do not fail to experience the detrimental effects of it. As one Black male student shares, “…it’s like we did something wrong, but we didn’t do anything. Prisoners are there [in prison] because they did something wrong. We’re just here to learn, we didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s like we’re being punished” (Morris, 2005). The reactions of both the Black male teacher and the Black student in relation to the disciplinary culture of their school are characteristic of what this project sought to learn more about and highlights below.     

Works Cited

Achievement First Web Page (http://www.achievementfirst.org/)

Anyon, Jean. “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” Learning Power. Web.

Ash, Katie. “Q&A: KIPP CEO Addresses Impact of Discipline Policies.” Education Week, 20 Feb. 2013. Web.

Bailey, Melissa. “Amistad Sends 30 to College, ‘Loses’ 23.’” New Haven Independent, 30 May 2013. Web.

Bean, Max. “The No-Excuses Charter School Movement.” Dewey to Delpit. Web.

Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert. “Schooling in Capitalist America Revisited.” Sociology of Education, 75(1). 2002, p.1-18. Web.

Finn, Chester E., Bruno V. Manno, and Gregg Vanourek. Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education. Princeton University Press, 2000. Web.

Golann, Joanne W. 2015. “The Paradox of Success at a No-Excuses School.” Sociology of Education 20(10):1-17. Web.

Griffin, Ramon. “Colonizing the Black Natives: Reflections From a Former NOLA Charter School Dean of Students.” Cloaking Inequity, 24 Mar. 2014. Web.

Griffin, Ramon. “An Open Letter to Teachers and Staff at No Excuses Charter Schools.” Edushyster, 25 Jan. 2016. Web.

Lazarus, Neil. “Fanon, Nationalism, and the Question of Representation in Postcolonial Theory.” Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives (1999): 161. Web.

Morris, Edward W. “‘Tuck in That Shirt!’ Race, Class, Gender and Discipline in an Urban School.” Sociological Perspectives (2005), 48(1). p.25-48. Web.

Ravitch, Diane. 2011. “Ch.7: Choice The Story of an Idea.” The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education: Basic Books. p.113-147. Web.

Schneider, Mercedes. “Details on the Success Academy ‘Got to Go List’ Lawsuit.” Huffpost Education, 11 Jan. 2016. Web.

SuccessAcademies. “Success Academy Parents Talk to the New York Times.” Online Video Clip. YouTube. YouTube, 12 Feb. 2016. Web.

Taylor, Kate. “At a Success Academy Charter School, Singling Out Pupils Who Have ‘Got to Go.’” The New York Times, 29 Oct. 2015. Web.

Taylor, Kate. “At Success Academy School, a Stumble in Math and a Teacher’s Anger on Video.” The New York Times, 12 Feb. 2016. Web.

Choosing Catholic Schools: Investigating the Role of the Archdiocese of Chicago in Chicago School Choice

Introduction

Throughout the country, students are increasingly gaining the opportunity to choose. The boundaries of where one may attend school are blurring in favor of systems of choice that provide students and their parents the authority to elect the school that best fits their conception of a quality education. This presence of and access to multiple schools that grant families a choice in their student’s academic future is defined here as school choice. School choice has been increasing in cities across the country; however, by and large conversations around school choice have been restricted to conversations around increasing options in the public schools.

To be sure, this may in part be due to the question of access. By virtue of their tuition rates and at times exclusive nature, private schools may be prone to being excluded from conversations surrounding school choice. However, just as there are differences amongst publicly funded schools, private schools come in many different forms. One subset of private schools in particular–Catholic Schools–are worth noting, particularly given that some Catholic School systems educate individuals from a plethora of financial means and diverse backgrounds, including non-religious ones.

In addition to having the fourth largest public school system in the United States, Chicago, with its surrounding suburbs, hosts the largest Catholic school system in the country (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2015a, p. 2). As of the 2014-15 school year, the Archdiocese of Chicago ran 239 Catholic schools throughout Chicago and its surrounding suburbs ranging from preschool to 12th grade (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2015b, p. 73, 76); their Catholic schools in Chicago alone enrolled 41,503 students (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2015b, p.78), 10.5% of Chicago Public School’s 396,683 students (Chicago Public Schools, 2016a).

These students stem from a myriad of backgrounds; 56.6% of students are white, 21.32% are Latino, 11.91% are African American, 2.56% are Asian American, and 3.36% are multiracial (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2015a, p. 2). Moreover, not all students are Catholic; in fact, 17% of the overall student population is non-Catholic (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2015b, p. 79). The Archdiocese of Chicago (2015a) attributes this to “the quality of Archdiocesan schools and the positive social values that are integrated into student life” (p. 2). Finally, the Archdiocese of Chicago schools also collaborate with various programs to provide financial assistance (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2015a, p. 2).

However, despite this continual prevalence, academic discourse has largely excluded Catholic schools from school choice scholarship, with the exception of the historical use of voucher programs to access Catholic schools, a subset of school choice that has largely fallen out of favor and consequently rolled back in favor of magnet and charter schools.

Yet these enrollment numbers suggest that the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Catholic schools do play a role in Chicagoans and their neighbors’ school choice decisions. What exactly those decisions and the discussions that precede them look like, however, remains unclear. For this reason, in this paper I hope to investigate the role of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Catholic schools play in the school choice system currently available to Chicago residents, with the goal of inspiring others to address the topic in scholarship to come.

Literature Review

School Choice and Chicago’s Public School

Chicago residents have an increasing number of public schooling options for their children, consisting of magnet and charter schools in addition to their traditional neighborhood schools. While traditionally, the school a child attends has been tied to their address, school choice in Chicago has increased students options by allowing them the opportunity to enroll in schools beyond those dictated by their addresses. As of January of this year, Chicagoans had access to 256 schools with no attendance zones in addition to the 415 schools with attendance boundaries; 130 of these no-zone schools were charters (Richards and Perez, 2016).

While school districts such as those of Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baltimore, Maryland approach school choice in various ways, Chicago has no formal school choice fair, website or lottery system. Instead, Chicago residents have two avenues by which to apply to public schools other than their designated neighborhood schools.

The first is the Chicago Public School’s Office of Access and Enrollment, which supervises all applications for elementary and high school magnet schools, selective enrollment schools, and military academies, as well as CTE-College and Career Academies and IB Programs at the high school level (CPS Office of Access and Enrollment, 2016). The application process differs for each subcategory and between elementary and high school levels; the entrance policies used include computerized lotteries, point systems, and entrance exams.

For the remaining publically funded schools–charter and contract schools–parents and students must apply directly through the schools themselves, which enroll through a randomized lottery (Chicago Public Schools, 2016b; Chicago Public Schools, 2016c). While not under Chicago Public Schools’ direct purview, CPS does provide a list of 59 elementary and 72 high school charters on their website (Chicago Public Schools, 2016d; Chicago Public Schools, 2016e). They additionally profile those high school charters in their High School Guide (Chicago Public Schools, 2015). Figures 1 and 2 summarize the public school choice options for Chicago’s students.

Figure 1. School Choice within Chicago Public Elementary Schools

Figure 2. School Choice within Chicago Public High Schools

While the availability of alternative schooling options does not guarantee their appeal, the data suggests that Chicagoans have largely bought into school choice. To be sure, there is no current data documenting families’ exact schooling decisions, that is to say, what specific schools they are choosing to enroll their students in. Still, in the 2015-16 school year, 51% of CPS students (students enrolled in Chicago public schools) opted out of their assigned neighborhood schools; among high school students specifically, this number jumps to 73% (Hing and Richards, 2016).

To be sure, in addition to an increasing number of public school options, many white students and their parents also also opting out of the public school system altogether. The racial breakdown during the 2013-14 school year for all CPS schools was 9.2% White, 45.2% Hispanic, 39.7% African-American, and 5.9% other (Chicago Tribune, 2016), inconsistent with Chicago’s racial makeup of 45.0% White (31.9% non-Hispanic), 28.9% Hispanic, 32.9% African American and 6.0% other (US Census, 2010). Indeed, data from the previous year shows that white students are opting out of CPS schools at rates much larger than other minorities (Moore 2014).

Figure 3. White students are opting out of CPS schools at higher rates than their African American peers

Private Catholic Schools and School Choice

Given the complex nature of school choice in Chicago, it is important to have a clear understanding of the role private schools and particularly private Catholic schools play in this ever-expanding school choice market. Yet up to this point, Catholic schools have largely been omitted from school choice conversations, with two exceptions. The first is the historical discussion of Catholic schools in academic scholarship around school vouchers. The second is recent media’s attributing declining Catholic school enrollments to increasing public school options.

Thinking Historically: Catholic Schools, School Choice and the Voucher Movement

School vouchers are vouchers provided to families for the equivalent amount as that which would have been allocated for their child at their local public school. This voucher allows families the voice to enroll  in a local private school. Unfortunately, vouchers are tied to a negative history, as they were historically used by white families who hoped to evade integration used school vouchers and enrolled their children in Catholic schools (Alexander & Alexander, 2004). Moreover, the diverting of public funds towards private schools, and particularly religious schools, also stirred controversies around a lack of separation between church and state (Americans United, 2016). For that reason, vouchers largely fell out of favor as momentum shifted towards magnet and charter schools.

Nevertheless, Illinois attempted to pass a voucher bill in 2010. Though it fell through, some continued to be optimistic year later that passing a state-approved voucher system would allow parents to access successful private schools, including the Archdiocese of Chicago schools:

This is a school system in which 70 percent of third-graders are proficient in reading and about 73 percent are proficient in math, according to the 2012 TerraNova exams. At the high school level, 95 percent of its graduates enroll in a college or university.

There is an opportunity here.

It’s time to rescue kids trapped in failing and overcrowded neighborhood schools. It’s time for the legislature to take up school choice.

Without a state-approved voucher system, the only way low-income families can access better schools is through the help of nonprofits and scholarships. But the need far outweighs the available resources. (Chicago Tribune, 2014).

Thinking Presently: Catholic Schools, School Choice, Competition and Scandal

Other than conversations surrounding vouchers, Catholic schools have been included in school choice only in so far as increasing public school choice has been linked to decreased Catholic school attendance. Just as neighborhood schools throughout the country are beginning to close and consolidate in favor of an increasing presence of magnet and charter schools, the steady decline of catholic schools in recent years has also been explained to growing competition from the increasing availability of free alternatives to neighborhood schools.

This draw from the outside has also been linked to a diminishing appeal of Catholic schools, particularly as recent years have uncovered the sexual misconducts of priests; indeed, such misconducts have been the focus of recent popular movies including Doubt (2008) and Spotlight (2015).

Questioning the Narrative: The Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools

While the Archdiocese has indeed experienced a steady decline in school enrollment, it remains unclear what the exact causes are. If it were the case that the enrollment decrease has been due to increasing school choice, one would expect to see the greatest losses in areas where school choice has improved and where an increasing number of public school options are now available; that is to say, one would expect the largest decreases in the city. However, a quick look at the data is inconclusive. In the 2014-15 school year, there was indeed a 3.4% decrease in enrollment in Chicago Catholic high schools, compared to a 3.0% decrease in its surrounding Cook County suburbs and 1.2% increase in the handful of schools in the northern Lake County suburbs (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2015b, p. 81). However, at the same time, Chicago Catholic elementary schools experienced a minute decrease of 0.9%, while suburban schools in both Cook and Lake counties experienced much larger decreases of 1.9% and 2.5% (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2015b, p. 80). That suburban schools have just as large, if not larger, decreases brings into question the validity of this simplistic narrative.

Aside from this, however, is the question of alternative explanations for school enrollment decreases. In their Executive Summary, the Archdiocese of Chicago (2015a) points to the role demographic differences may play, as well as to hopes for recent stabilization:

Like many metropolitan Catholic school systems, the greatest challenges faced by the Archdiocese of Chicago are shifting demographics and declining enrollments. According to census data, there are fewer students in Cook and Lake Counties than there were 10 years ago. Despite this statistic, the Archdiocese of Chicago schools have seen an improvement in enrollment results in recent years. From 2005-2009, the system experienced an average decline of 4.2 % of its student population each year. From 2010-2015, the system stabilized to an average decline of 1% per year. The system wide goal is enrollment growth, but the recent stabilization is a sign of hope (p. 2).

Finally, the impact of priest sexual misconducts on parents’ decisions in enrolling their children in the Archdiocese of Chicago’s schools is unclear, as that Archdiocese has been transparent and decisively responsive to all allegations of sexual misconduct (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2016a).

With these points in mind, this paper thus will attempt to illustrate the relationship between the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Catholic Schools and Chicago school choice in two manners. First, it will compare recent trends in the decrease of school enrollment alongside increasing school choice options, in order to confirm or deny their correlation.

Secondly, this paper will attempt to paint a fuller picture of the way the Archdiocese of Chicago’s schools can be thought of as part of the school choice system for, regardless of the date, the narrative thus far perpetuates a very limited view of the relationship between Chicago’s catholic schools and school choice.

Methodology: Investigating the associations between decreasing enrollment in Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools and increasing school choice within Chicago Public Schools

In order to delineate to what extent there exists a correlation between declining enrollment in Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools and increasing school choice within Chicago Public schools, this paper profiles two Archdiocese of Chicago elementary schools, under the assumption that most parents would opt to enroll their children in schools closer to home, while being more willing to allow their high school children to travel across the city.

This paper juxtaposes the changes in student enrollment, calculated from data provided by the National Center for Education Statistics Elementary/Secondary Information System Changes, against an analysis of the quantity and quality of Chicago Public Schools in the surrounding area. The quantity of schools is determined by examining the number of schools located within a 2.5 mile radius of the Archdiocese of Chicago school. As students throughout these schools are tested differently, the quality of schools available cannot be determined by test scores. Instead, this paper turns to school ratings, teacher-student ratios, quality of curriculums and extracurriculars, and reputations.

In particular, this paper looks at the Chicago Public School system’s School Quality Rating Policy (Chicago Public Schools, 2016f). School ratings are updated annually and based on a five point scale that is derived from a series of metrics. Level 1+ signifies that a school is nationally competitive “with the opportunity to share best practices with others” (Chicago Public Schools, 2016f). Level 1 designates a high performing “good school choice with many positive qualities” (Chicago Public Schools, 2016f). Level 2+ is an average performing school needing additional support to implement interventions (Chicago Public Schools, 2016f). Level 2 is a below average school requiring increased support (Chicago Public Schools, 2016f). Finally, a Level 3 school is the lowest performing, needing “intensive intervention” (Chicago Public Schools, 2016f). Figure 4 demonstrates an overview of the SQRP:

Figure 4. An Overview of the Chicago Public School’s School Quality Rating Policy

Results: Two Archdiocese of Chicago School Profiles

School Profile 1: Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts at 1439 W. Wellington Ave

Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Art (AACA) is an Archdiocese of Chicago’s elementary school serving students from 3-year-old pre-kindergarten through 8th grade (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2016b). AACA is located in the city’s North Center neighborhood, north of downtown Chicago.

Figure 5. Map of Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts

School Choice near AACA

AACA specifically lies within the boundaries of Chicago Public School’s Burley Elementary School, which serves prekindergarten through eighth grades and is rated a 1+ on the CPS SQRP (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g). Within a 2.5 radius of AACA there are an additional 35 neighborhood elementary schools (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g), that being schools that service pre-kindergarten or kindergarten through eighth grades. Of these 35 schools, eighteen are rated at 1+, thirteen are rated at 1, one is rated at 2+, and the final three are 2s (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g).

Some of these neighborhood schools are additionally attractive due to their extra programs: one, Mayer Elementary School, has a magnet program, while three others (Alexander Graham Bell School, Coonley Elementary School, and A.N. Pritzker School) have Regional Gifted Centers (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g).

Figure 6. Map of the 49 Elementary and Middle Schools located within 2.5 miles of AACA. There is an additional Selective Enrollment High School beginning at 7th grade not pictured.

Within this 2.5 radius there are also 5 charter schools (four serving kindergarten through eight, another sixth through ninth), a citywide neighborhood, eight citywide magnets, and one selective enrollment school which serves grades seven through twelve (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g). All of these schools save for four of the charters are rated 1+ (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g).

Figure 7. Types of Public Schools within 2.5 Miles of Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts

[iframe width=”478.617912314819″ height=”408.6205733944955″ seamless frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MLopIFvJKCWW8ATG8uhsGN1oRXLkY8_m-HmsjhTeUBQ/pubchart?oid=1390562317&format=interactive”]

Figure 8. School Quality Ratings of Public Schools within 2.5 Miles of Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts

[iframe width=”529.3402552939685″ height=”305″ seamless frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MLopIFvJKCWW8ATG8uhsGN1oRXLkY8_m-HmsjhTeUBQ/pubchart?oid=2122538144&format=interactive”]

Figure 9. Combined Breakdown of Ratings and Types of Public Schools within 2.5 Miles of Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts

[iframe width=”511.8854489164087″ height=”613.164350608823″ seamless frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MLopIFvJKCWW8ATG8uhsGN1oRXLkY8_m-HmsjhTeUBQ/pubchart?oid=1050483027&format=interactive”]

AACA Student Enrollment

AACA’s attendance has steadily risen over the past decade from 139 students in 2003-2004 to 395 students in 2011-2012 (ELSI, 2016). This enrollment count has further increased, with AACA reporting close to 450 students in the 2013-14 school year (Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts, 2015).

Figure 10. Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts Total Student Enrollment

[iframe width=”600″ height=”371″ seamless frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MLopIFvJKCWW8ATG8uhsGN1oRXLkY8_m-HmsjhTeUBQ/pubchart?oid=1190379221&format=interactive”]

School Profile 2: St. Richard School at 5025 S. Kenneth Avenue

St. Richard School, located in Chicago’s Archer Heights neighborhood, serves students beginning at 3 years old in their pre-kindergarten classroom, and continuing up to the eighth grade (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2016b). St. Richard’s student body is primarily Latino, with 88.6% of its students in the 2014-15 school year, but also includes Caucasians (11%) and African Americans (0.6%) (St. Richard School, 2015). 72% of its students are from low-income backgrounds and qualify for free or reduced lunch and breakfast (St. Richard School, 2015).

School Choice near St. Richard School

The neighborhood school assigned to the St. Richard’s area is Edwards Elementary, a kindergarten through 8th grade school with a 1 rating (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g). Generally, within a 2.5 radius of St. Richard School there are a total of 21 neighborhood public schools serving elementary grades (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g). 16 are Kindergarten through Eighth grades; the others serve Kindergarten through Fourth, Kindergarten through Fifth, Fifth through Eighth and Sixth through Eighth (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g). Of the Kindergarten through Eighths, seven are rated 1+, six 1, and the final three 2+ (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g). The Kindergarten through 4 is rated 1+, while both middle schools are rated 1. Of the two Kindergarten through Fifths, one is rated a 1, and the other a 2+.

Figure 11. Map of the 30 Elementary and Middle Schools and their ratings located within 2.5 miles of St. Richard School

Additionally, there are 6 no-zone charter schools, a neighborhood bounded charter, a city-wide Pre-kindergarten through Eighth, and a magnet Pre-Kindergarten through Eighth within a 2.5 mile radius of St. Richard (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g). Four of the no-zone charter schools–Global Citizenship, UNO Brighton Park, UNO Marquez, and UNO Torres–as well as the bounded charter UNO Tamayo are rated a 1 (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g). The other 2 charters, as well as Talman Citywide Elementary and Gunsaulus Magnet, are rated a 1+ (Chicago Public Schools, 2016g).

Figure 12. School Quality Ratings of Public Schools located within 2.5 Miles of St. Richard School

[iframe width=”395.64150943396226″ height=”319″ seamless frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MLopIFvJKCWW8ATG8uhsGN1oRXLkY8_m-HmsjhTeUBQ/pubchart?oid=1999619655&format=interactive”]

Figure 13. Breakdown of above School Quality Ratings by Type of Public School

[iframe width=”495.6873315363882″ height=”362″ seamless frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MLopIFvJKCWW8ATG8uhsGN1oRXLkY8_m-HmsjhTeUBQ/pubchart?oid=660653751&format=interactive”]

St. Richard School Student Enrollment

St. Richard’s enrollment has remained relatively stable, save for a dip between 2003-2004 and 2007-2008 (ELSI, 2016).

Figure 14. St. Richard School Total Student Enrollment

[iframe width=”600″ height=”371″ seamless frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MLopIFvJKCWW8ATG8uhsGN1oRXLkY8_m-HmsjhTeUBQ/pubchart?oid=734443994&format=interactive”]

Discussion

Explaining the Decline: Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools and Public School Choice

These profiles demonstrate that the narrative of declining Catholic school enrollment, while true overall, is more complex than documented by the media. Despite the prevalence of these various well-rated public schooling options, AACA’s enrollment has steadily risen over the past decade, while St. Richard School’s enrollment over time has remained relatively stable, if not increased slightly. To be sure, the majority of the schools available to these families other than their neighborhood schools are charter schools, which require a lottery that does not guarantee admission. Still, for the most part the public schools in this area are well-rated.

It is also important to note that these stable enrollment trends exist even for schools serving lower-income and minority children; St. Richard, which is 88.6% Latino, has 72% of its students on free or reduced lunch and breakfast (St. Richard School, 2015). This arguably speaks to the surprising affordability of a Catholic education in communities as diverse as the Archdiocese of Chicago’s, even amongst richer populations. AACA, for its part, awards $53,000 in tuition assistance annually (Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts, 2015). Indeed, there are various avenues through which students can afford a Catholic education, including funding from the Archdiocese itself, through its recently launched Caritas Scholars Program, the Big Shoulders Fund, or through alumni networks. Earlier this year, I, as an alumna of St. Michael the Archangel School, an Archdiocese of Chicago elementary school located in South Chicago, received a request from the school to consider donating to a scholarship fund; the letter included the story of a fellow St. Michael alumna who attended on scholarship and now is graduating from a well-ranked college.

Reimagining Catholic Schools as School Choice

Thus we see that despite declines in attendance, the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools continue to provide schooling for thousands of Chicago’s students. For this reason, it is important to develop a more nuanced understanding of the ways these Catholic schools may be thought of as another option in the ever expanding school choice market. Indeed recent initiatives launched by the Archdiocese of Chicago demonstrate the ways in which the Archdiocese of Chicago’s schools are adapting to this market and marketing their own educational model.

One example is Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts, which changed its name in December of 2002 from Alphonsus Academy to include an emphasis on arts (Private School Review, 2016). Indeed statements such as

“A faith-based Catholic education is still central to the AACA story, but our arts focus allows our children to engage in learning experiences that build critical thinking skills and apply those skills to real-life situations” (Private School Review, 2016)

suggest a desire to expand their student population. To be sure, priority in admissions is given to registered parishioners of St. Alphonsus and other parishes. However, at the same time, academic excellence and arts integration are prioritized over their Catholic community in statements such as

“We inspire and enable our children to reach their full potential by providing a rigorous education combining academic excellence, an arts-integrated curriculum, and a strong Catholic foundation” (Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts, 2016).

While further research is necessary to determine the extent to which one can claim this marketing as “saving” the school, AACA does appear to have worked to maintain attractive through various measures, including improving their pupil-teacher ratios from the 2009-10 school year to 2011-12.

Figure 15: The large improvement of AACA’s pupil-teacher ratios may suggest an effort to maintain ratios competitive with other high quality schools.

[iframe width=”600″ height=”371″ seamless frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MLopIFvJKCWW8ATG8uhsGN1oRXLkY8_m-HmsjhTeUBQ/pubchart?oid=1861268828&format=interactive”]

St. Richard School also is working to remain competitive, emphasizing in their Executive Summary (2015) their extracurricular opportunities, professional development for teachers, and a current technology initiative that aims to provide every student access to iPads (St. Richard School, 2015). At the same time, part of St. Richard’s appeal may be the opportunity to enroll their children in an additional Extended Day program, that extends the school day on both ends (from 6:30am-7:40am and 3:00-6:00pm) (St. Richard School, 2015). This Extended Day is ideal for parents who work long hours and are wary about their children being alone, particularly in some of the higher-crime neighborhoods.

In addition to efforts conducted within individuals schools, the Archdiocese of Chicago as a whole has worked to rebrand their schools through their website, their 2013-16 Strategic Plan for Catholic Schools, and the recently launched Virtual Academy. On their website, the Archdiocese of Chicago markets their religious education is not free, but a worthy investment (Archdiocese of Chicago, 2016c). While focusing on educating the entire student, the Archdiocese of Chicago also provides a list of its tangible achievements, including above average scores, high graduation rates, and the highest number of US Department of Education Blue Ribbon schools of any school district. A quality early childhood education is also emphasized on their website.

The 2013-16 Strategic Plan for Catholic Schools and School Choice imagines a specific future for the Archdiocese, including efforts to improve curriculum and the leadership quality within teachers and schools, as well as raise funding to make the overall school system both higher quality and more affordable.

Finally, through their new Virtual Academy platform, the Archdiocese has further adjusted Catholic schooling to truly fit the individual student, as it allows students to access a quality education from their own homes. More than that, the Virtual Academy can also act as a supplement to a child’s schooling by providing extra support and advanced material, such as Advanced Placement courses.

In sum, Catholic schools, and particularly the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic schools,  can not and should not be omitted from conversations surrounding school choice. While Catholic schools may not be the best fit for every student, across the country and particularly the city of Chicago, they are providing thousands of students with quality education, an opportunity all students in this country deserve access to.

Works Cited

Alexander, K. and Alexander, K. (2004). Vouchers and the Privatization of American Education: Justifying Racial Resegregation from Brown to Zelman. Retrieved from https://www.illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/ilr-content/articles/2004/5/KAlexander.pdf

Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts (2015). Executive Summary. Retrieved from http://www.advanced.org/oasis2/u/par/accreditation/summary/pdf;jsessionid=64ED0A7C03D08B3D858FD511CD68FBE2?institutionId=56045

Archdiocese of Chicago (2016a). Document Release Fact Sheet. Archdiocese of Chicago. Retrieved from http://www.archchicago.org/document-release/factsheet.aspx

Archdiocese of Chicago (2016b). Elementary School Locator. Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools. Retrieved from http://schools.archchicago.org/schools/ElementarySchoolSearch.aspx

Archdiocese of Chicago (2016c). Catholic Education in Today’s World. Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools. Retrieved from http://schools.archchicago.org/whycatholiced/catholiceducationtoday.aspx

Archdiocese of Chicago (2015a). Executive Summary. Retrieved from http://www.advanced.org/oasis2/u/par/accreditation/summary/pdf;jsessionid=1C9FAF30A70DA957685D451A9B1FBA79?institutionId=4528

Archdiocese of Chicago (2015b). Data Composite: Facts and Figures for Year Ending in 2014. Retrieved from https://www.archchicago.org/departments/strategic-planning/pdf/Data%20Comp%202014.pdf

Chicago Public Schools (2016a). CPS Stats and Facts. Chicago Public Schools. Retrieved from http://cps.edu/About_CPS/At-a-glance/Pages/Stats_and_facts.aspx

Chicago Public Schools (2016b). Charter Schools. Chicago Public Schools. Retrieved from http://cps.edu/Schools/Elementary_schools/Pages/Charter.aspx

Chicago Public Schools (2016c). Contract Schools. Chicago Public Schools. Retrieved from http://cps.edu/Schools/Elementary_schools/Pages/Contract.aspx

Chicago Public Schools (2016d). Find a School Search Results: Elementary, Charter. Chicago Public Schools. Retrieved from http://cps.edu/Schools/Find_a_school/Pages/SchoolSearchResults.aspx?Type=1&Filter=CPSSchoolGrade=Elementary%20school;CPSSchoolType=Charter

Chicago Public Schools (2016e). Find a School Search Results: High School, Charter. Chicago Public Schools. Retrieved from http://cps.edu/Schools/Find_a_school/Pages/SchoolSearchResults.aspx?Type=1&Filter=CPSSchoolGrade=High%20school;CPSSchoolType=Charter

Chicago Public Schools (2016f). School Quality Rating Policy (SQRP) Overview. Retrieved from http://cps.edu/SiteCollectionDocuments/SQRP_one_pager.pdf

Chicago Public Schools (2016g). Chicago Public Schools Map School Locator. Chicago Public Schools. Retrieved from http://cps.edu/ScriptLibrary/Map-SchoolLocator2015/index.html

Chicago Public Schools (2015). CPS High School Guide 2016-2017. Retrieved from http://www.cpsoae.org/2016-2017%20High%20School%20Guide_English_v4.pdf

Chicago Tribune (2016). Chicago Public Schools. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/education/schools/chicago-public-schools-ORGOV000081-topic.html

Chicago Tribune (2014). It’s time for school choice in Illinois. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-19/opinion/ct-edit-school-vouchers-edit-0119-20140119_1_school-choice-charter-schools-recovery-school-district/2

CPS Office of Access and Enrollment (2016). Overview. Chicago Public Schools Office of Access and Enrollment. Retrieved from http://www.cpsoae.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=235006&type=d

Hing, G and Richards, J.S. (2016). Chicago School Choice in Charts. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-chicago-school-neighborhood-enrollment-charts-20160106-htmlstory.html

Moore, N. (2014). Why so few white kids land in CPS—and why it matters. WBEZ 91.5. Retrieved from https://www.wbez.org/shows/curious-city/why-so-few-white-kids-land-in-cps-and-why-it-matters/9b19752f-94cd-47d1-b313-e9e32ebfe187

Private School Review (2016). Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts. Private School Review. Retrieved from http://www.privateschoolreview.com/alphonsus-academy-center-for-the-arts-profile

Richards, J.S. and Perez, J. (2016). Chicago’s neighborhood schools hurting as choice abounds. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicago-schools-choice-neighborhood-enrollment-met-20160108-story.html

St. Richard School (2015). Executive Summary. Retrieved from http://www.advanced.org/oasis2/u/par/accreditation/summary/pdf;jsessionid=AF2F9EC781108C2ED6057626E68B16CC?institutionId=56234.

US Census (2010). Quick Facts: Chicago city, IL. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST120214/1714000,17031

Introduction

            As Hurricane Katrina made landfall the city of New Orleans in September of 2005, destroying numerous structures and buildings that populated this vibrant Southern city, many of the city’s public schools already existed in a state of disarray.  A combination of inadequate resources, disorganized management, and overwhelming student hardship resulted in chronic low-performance for the students of New Orleans, with especially low performance and low graduation rates for special education students (Vaughan, Mogg, Zimmerman, and O’Neill, 2011; Adamson, Cook-Harvey, and Darling-Hammond, 2015).  In response to the unacceptable condition of education in New Orleans and groups of schools in other Louisiana cities, the Louisiana Department of Education established the Recovery School District (RSD) to take over and turnaround the lowest performing schools.  The central reform strategy brought many independent charter organizations into the RSD in New Orleans to establish new charter schools, while the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) created some charter schools while maintaining others as direct-run schools.  This system requires that all public school students participate in school choice, creating a challenging selection process for families of special education students as they must consider additional factors in navigating the school choice process to ensure the fulfillment of their child’s individual social and educational needs.  By investigating the interactions between school choice and special education in New Orleans’ RSD and OPSB public schools, the challenges presented by the availability of special education-specific information, nuanced recruitment and marketing methods, the application process, and various post-enrollment “push-out” practices become apparent and demonstrate the shortcomings of the public school system in New Orleans in ensuring that special education students receive equitable opportunities in the school choice process.

Background

In the early 2000s, schools in the OPSB ranked among the worst in the United States by metrics of student test performance and graduation rates, failing to adequately provide for a student population facing challenges and instability beyond the classroom (Jones, 2010).  The graduation rate for special education students sank to a mere 5% in 2001 (Schnaiberg and Lake, 2015).  Issues of governance plagued the organizational structures of the district, while mismanaged budgets and payroll in an environment of high turnover pushed the district to a state of financial instability (Jones, 2010).  In 2003, the Louisiana State Legislature created Act 9, which allowed for the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) to seize responsibility of a public school deemed failing and establish and govern the RSD, with the BESE able to continue to oversee the operation of traditional schools or create charter schools (Louisiana Legislature, 2003).  Despite resistance at both the state and local level, the act gained enough support to be enacted into law and began implementation in OPSB schools starting in 2004.

In the first years of the RSD, over 63 percent of public schools in New Orleans received the lowest label possible from the state School Performance Score, Academically Unacceptable (AUS), shifting control of these schools to the RSD (Vaughan et al., 2011).  While some of these schools were maintained as traditional schools managed by the district, outside charter companies like the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and the Institute for Academic Excellence entered the RSD to start directing individual schools.  Yet, the city’s public schools largely still battled with mismanagement of OPSB, with many students remaining in low-performing or failing schools (Vaughan et al., 2011).  In the years following the hurricane, New Orleans battled to rebuild and reopen its public schools, facing challenges of inadequate supplies and facilities, a shortage of teachers and staff, and highly variable student populations (Vaughan et al. 2011).  As stated by Leslie Jacobs, a founder of the RSD, the city’s public schools continued to fail its special education students after the storm as they were “not equipped” to so do (Dreilinger, 2015).  However, the RSD slowly recovered while reducing the number of traditional schools run directly by the school district and increasing the number of charter schools controlled by outside management organizations.  By the 2014-2015 school year, the RSD consisted entirely of independently managed charter schools, while the OPSB consisted of 6 direct-run traditional schools and 14 charter schools (Adamson et al., 2015).  As reported in 2014, the public schools now an 87% Black student population—in a city home to a 60.2% percent Black or African American population—suggesting private school attendance for many White families (Louisiana DOE, 2015).  A reported 84% of students in the city’s public schools can be classified as economically disadvantaged, or qualifying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or Medicaid (Louisiana DOE, 2015).

Forty-four different organizations, including several national charter networks, manage New Orleans’ public schools.  The role of the RSD in managing its charter schools consists largely of directing the open enrollment process, while allowing each school to operate with a high degree of autonomy; in contrast, the OPSB still operates traditional schools with local governance structures while also managing its selective, priority, and open enrollment charter schools (Adamson et al., 2015). These schools have frequently been accused of under-enrolling special education students throughout the transition to an all-choice district—a controversy not exclusive to New Orleans’ school choice system (Vaughan et al., 2011).  Furthermore, the standards-driven reform that serves a foundational role at these schools has been shown to inadequately account for the needs of special education students (Hourigan, 2014; Voltz and Fore, 2006). A lawsuit brought forth in 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center against state superintendent Paul Pastorek, the Louisiana Department of Education, and the BESE alleged that these groups had failed to protect the rights of special education students in New Orleans Public Schools.  Particular discriminatory practices raised in the lawsuit include selective admissions practices, skewed distribution of adequate resources, and improper maintenance and implementation of individualized education plans (IEPs) (PB v Pastorek, 2010).

Map of New Orleans Public schools as of 2016 (New Orleans Parents Guide, 2016).  Click on the image for an enlarged version.

The evolution that transformed New Orleans’ public schools into an entirely choice-based structure demands that many charter schools and other schools of choice that may have previously engaged in exclusionary practices toward special education students (Wolf, 2011) must now serve students across the spectrum of academic and developmental abilities while still facing the pressures of demonstrating progress in a struggling school system.  How, then, does this affect the ways in which RSD and OPSB schools market their special education services to families and enroll special education students?  When school choice becomes the only choice for families of special education students, how does this impact the way they navigate the school choice landscape?  In investigating the information available to parents, enrollment patterns, and cases of attrition of special education students, the current shortcomings of New Orleans’ public schools in providing an equitable school choice experience to special education students and their families emerge.

Literature Review

School choice as public education reform involves allowing families and students in the public school system to gain control of where and how their students are educated, creating a marketplace that pushes schools to focus on higher achievement where successful schools flourish and struggling schools are forced to improve or close their doors (Goldhaber, 1997). Charter schools have played a key role in school choice, originally working with the vision of shifting school leadership to give teachers the ability to develop innovative strategies while working to break the segregation created by divided housing and neighborhood public schools; it has since become a tactic for improving schooling options, often in urban settings, by creating a free-market-type model for education as independent companies operate new schools with diverse educational philosophies (Kahlenberg and Potter, 2014).

Effectiveness of school choice reform in improving student outcomes, mobility, and equity continues to be debated, particularly in what some have termed New Orleans’ school choice “experiment”; the ability of parents to access information and seek out higher-performing schools varies and can leave high-risk students at a disadvantage (Welsh, Duque, and McEachin, 2016; Parvis, 2015).  The school marketplace in New Orleans, with RSD schools independently operated and OPSB schools with both open and selective enrollment, results in a wide range of school quality (Arce-Trigatti, Harris, Jabbar, and Lincove 2015).  Zimmerman and Vaughan investigated the enrollment patterns of low socioeconomic status students and concluded that, despite the efforts of school choice to break-up the demographic divides perpetuated by neighborhood schools, these students benefited less than high socioeconomic students (2013).  Similarly, special education students have been shown to be at risk for being disadvantaged in the school choice process, as schools with varying resources and budgets can struggle to meet the high per-pupil expenditures of special education students and create decidedly unequal education environments (Berry Cullen and Rivkin, 2003).  Furthermore, unfamiliarity with what constitutes educational discrimination among the independently run charter organizations, many of which employ non-educators in executive roles, and the perceived incompatibility of meeting special education accommodations with charter school’s increased independence create further complications (Berry Cullen and Rivkin, 2003).  This research seeks to understand how, given these additional constraints in the school choice process, families of special education students in New Orleans navigate the process; by comparing this to how schools approach marketing to special education students and their enrollment patterns, trends regarding the equity of opportunities should emerge.

Methods

Data collection for this investigation combines a number of sources about the state of education and special education in New Orleans and builds on the research of education scholars who have studied school choice systems in New Orleans and beyond.  Investigation into the current choice and application process for OPSB and RSD schools yields the necessary information about how the families of special education students exercise school choice, with information obtained from the organizations’ websites as a parent or family would have access.  Furthermore, several district and school websites were investigated to find available information about their special education programs with the goal of understanding the information or lack thereof that families have available to make their school choice decisions.  Literature regarding the experiences of special education students and their families, including anecdotal evidence gathered from studies performed by education researchers, after enrollment in a New Orleans public school furnishes a foundation for understanding the implementation of a nearly all-charter system in New Orleans.

Findings: Information Available to Parents and Families

Families of students in New Orleans have access to both information distributed through physical printouts and online resources and verbal communication through interactions with school officials and other families to use in evaluating school choice options.  For example, the New Orleans Parents’ Guide, published by a community non-profit, outlines a profile of each of the public schools while citywide school expos and family resource centers provide a more personal and interactive resource for parents (Gross, DeArmond, and Denice, 2015).  The parents of New Orleans public school students interviewed by Gross et al.—parents who, resulting from selection bias, are suspected to remain more actively engaged in the school choice process—expressed that they used the resources and valued the information they provided.  However, parents also expressed that they desired more detailed information regarding the culture of the schools, as different charter organizations have the autonomy to create different academic and disciplinary cultures (2015).  For parents of special education students, an understanding of school philosophy becomes of greater importance in assessing the appropriate school environment (Byrne, 2011), necessitating access to this type of information.

Individual school websites host the online resources provided to families regarding special education services for their students available without direct engagement with school officials.  Of 20 randomly selected RSD schools, including one network-wide website for New Orleans KIPP schools, whose websites  were searched for information regarding special education, 12 did not include any explicit explanation of special education policies in their schools on web pages or in any school handbook attachments, including one school that did not have a website.  Of the school websites that did make mention of special education, the most extensive explanations of special education policies were for schools part of a larger charter network, including New Orleans College Prep Charter Schools and Crescent City Schools.  These schools provided explicit explanations of disciplinary procedures and implementation of IEPs.  In contrast, the KIPP New Orleans website did not provide accessible information regarding special education.  Of the five OPSB directly run traditional schools with websites, information about the school’s policies and practices for special education did not appear in any of the tabs or links available.  Links to student-parent handbooks appeared, but did not function properly to make the documents available to the viewer.  Of the 12 OPSB charter school websites investigated, six did not include accessible information about special education policies.  The six schools that did include information about special education included a mention of or link to the general OPSB outline of IEP policies and legal compliance, but did not explicitly outline the interaction of these policies with the individual schools (For a list of the schools whose websites were searched, see here.)  Furthermore, as shown in the New Orleans Parents’ Guide to Public Schools accessed from the organization’s website, each school profile includes only a brief line about the special education services available and the behavior approach of the school.  Many of the profiles simply state “inclusion model,” referring to the method of keeping special education students in the same classrooms as students without special education needs, often with the assistance of a co-teacher or aid that ensures that student needs are addressed (Tremblay, 2013). However, the guide does not provide any further information to the implementation of this model in individual schools.  Such information may not provide families an adequate explanation of what their child will be experiencing in the classroom; for families with access to additional resources, like those provided at school expos, online information serves as a starting-off point for them to further investigate whether or not a school has the appropriate resources and educational environment.

Compared to the information available through these online resources regarding school mission statements, academic guidelines, extracurricular options, and logistical information, the information provided about special education remains scarce.  With these websites serving as a central resource for families to use to make their school choice decisions, there remains a lack of clarity regarding the opportunities and programs for special education students and the role that special education services play in the overall school community.  In interviewing parents who had experience with enrolling a special education student in a charter school and faced exclusionary practices in the early years of the RSD, Marcell found that parents perceive certain charter schools with an emphasis on college preparation or STEM as not “disability friendly” and do not attempt to enroll their students (2010).  Regardless of the intentionality of omitting information about special education while emphasizing other factors, families may interpret this to believe that certain school options will not be available to their child with special education needs and that they are limited in the availability of suitable school choice options.

Switching perspective to that of the administrators and schools responsible for publishing information and advertising to families, a study that engaged the administrators of New Orleans public schools with particularly high and low rates of special education student enrollment demonstrated that the majority of administrators had taken no direct action to recruit special education students to their schools (Marcell, 2010).  This lack of active advertising of special education services would suggest that families navigating school choice must take greater responsibility in acquiring information about special education resources to ensure that they can enroll their student in a school that will adequately meet their needs.  Some New Orleans schools, however, actively engaged in exclusionary recruiting and enrollment practices.  Prior to the creation of a centralized application for admission to public schools in New Orleans in 2012, charters could hold individual lotteries to facilitate their open enrollment processes.  Resulting from the pressure to sustain high test scores and performance, Jabbar found that schools actively engaged in various targeted marketing and screening procedures to limit student populations and only recruit students that will boost school performance (2015).  In her analysis of the response of school leaders to market-based competition in New Orleans schools, Jabbar reported that ten of thirty schools researched engaged in some form of selection process for open-enrollment schools.  Additionally, schools reportedly controlled their recruitment processes for “certain types of students” and would remain under-enrolled as opposed to allowing lower-performing students to enter the school to ensure high achievement ratings and test scores (2015).  Given that standards-based reform can often yield low test-score related outcomes for special education students (Voltz and Fore, 2006), schools that continue these practices will not feel compelled to seek out special education students.  Furthermore, in a report of how families make school choices in New Orleans, findings included a higher special needs population as a “factor that decreases the likelihood of choosing a school” for families looking at public schooling options; in the case of schools with high achievement statistics, however, parents would still demonstrate preference despite a higher special needs population (Lincove, Cowen, and Imbrongo, 2016).   School seeking to attract a particular student population may then find direct marketing to special education students a disadvantageous strategy.

The Application Process and Patterns of Enrollment

OneApp Process as explained on the EnrollNOLA website (EnrollNOLA, 2016).

Students and families entering or switching public schools in New Orleans now complete the OneApp, a centralized application started for the 2012-2013 school year that allows families to indicate their school preferences and enter the lottery process for each of those schools.  Initially implemented for the RSD alone, it now serves school in New Orleans under the governance of the RSD, OPSB, and BESE with some additional pre-kindergarten programs and includes the specific enrollment processes of each school type.  Currently, the RSD operates on an open enrollment system, with sibling and neighborhood preferences available to families; student academic records and achievement do not play a role in placing students in these schools (EnrollNOLA, 2016).  OPSB schools consist of both open enrollment schools with sibiling and neighborhood preferences and those that select students based on factors of academic performance and merit.  A group of OPSB schools use a separate application process known as the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools (GNOCCS), separating their student placement process.  For students with special education needs, the RSD considers the necessary accommodations for a student and allows them to partake in the preference process and be matched to any participating school.  However, OPSB schools may place students with special education needs in a school beyond those selected on the application, giving some weight to family choice while ensuring that they can provide services compliant with the rights of the student (New Orleans Parents Guide, 2016).   Once families have made their top choices through OneApp, a lottery formula determines their placement for open enrollment schools; ordering of the lottery numbers changes if a student’s application includes any of the particular preference factors.  Schools with performance-based admissions do not engage in the same lottery-based process for filling available seats (EnrollNOLA, 2016).

Of the four OPSB schools reported to utilize student performance based application data, each received the highest school quality rating of A in the 2014-2015 school year; additionally, the percentage of special education students in these four schools averaged 4.7%, lower than the 7.0% average for OPSB schools (OPSB, 2016).  Looking at the school district more broadly, a study that classified all New Orleans public schools as Tier 1 through 3 in descending order of academic quality found that, for the 2013-2014 school year, Tier 1 schools enrolled half and one fourth as many special education students as Tier 2 and Tier 3 schools, respectively (Adamson et al., 2015).  Jabbar found that, after the implementation of OneApp, some administrators of open enrollment schools continued to limit their student population by overenrolling to avoid assignment of out-of-school or disciplined students midyear or strategically not marketing to allow for hand selection of students after the OneApp deadline (2016).  Despite the implementation of a unified application process for many of the RSD and OPSB schools to create a more equitable placement process—preventing practices like interviews and use of personal connections to gain enrollment for students (Jabbar, 2016)—enrollment of special education students remains skewed across schools.

Pushing Students Out with Post-Enrollment Selection Methods

Even after parents and families have made school choice decisions, gained a spot through OneApp, and enrolled their student at a particular school, some families experience “push-out” of their special education students.  As described by Adamson et al., some public schools in New Orleans have been reported to utilize various “post-admissions selection mechanisms” (2015); these tactics include repeated punishments and suspensions, claiming to be incapable of providing adequate services within the scope of the school’s educational model, and threatening families with the prospect of expulsion (2015).  Administrators that employ these strategies manipulate the enrollment to ensure that the school receives the funding that follows that special education student before pushing that student out of the school (Adamson et al. 2015).  This reflects the perception of students as “money”—considering the amount of funding given for enrolling certain students compared to the actual amount of resources that need to be allocated toward their education—described by Jabbar, with offending schools unwilling to bear the responsibility of serving some of the city’s most vulnerable student population (2015).

In discussing her experience with RSD charter schools, a mother of three New Orleans students, including an elementary school son diagnosed with ADHD and emotional troubles, explained how her son’s teachers “wanted for [her] to remove [her] children” and repeatedly pushed back on the outlined terms of his IEP.  However, in response to her repeated complaints, the school took steps to improve their resources for special education students, including additional staff members to support the necessary programs (Westervelt, 2014).  Such occurrences suggest that schools can make the necessary changes for students who need help to succeed academically and developmentally in that school environment; these changes, however, can be limited to a case-by-case basis without a centralized organization to accommodate students with special education needs in each school.  While a statewide organization known as the Louisiana Special Education Cooperative functions to offer support to the special education population of school districts, only nine of New Orleans’ charter schools participated as of 2014 (Westervelt, 2014).  For parents, this lack of unity in the system that makes for varied conditions in different schools throughout RSD and OPSB further complicates the school choice process, especially when their child’s enrollment at a school proves to be unfitting for both the school and the child.

Conclusion

School choice in New Orleans’ public schools—with the majority operating as charter schools— presents families with the large task of wading through various sources of data to choose potential schools that suit their children’s needs.  For special education students and their families, additional challenges exist as these separately run schools may hesitate or be ill-equipped to serve these students as they face the pressure of producing high test scores and academic success in a historically low-performing city with a high-needs student population (Vaughan et. al, 2011).  While families have access to information online about each of the RSD and OPSB schools, depth and quality of content varies.  Special education-specific information remains sparse, either leaving families without the necessary information to select a fitting school for their student or requiring them to seek additional resources.  The need to obtain additional information through resources like school expos and open house events, while not exclusive to families of special education students, contains the additional complications of ensuring that a particular school’s educational philosophy and allocated resources accommodate an IEP.

Despite the measures taken to create a more transparent admissions process through the implementation of OneApp, schools can still tailor admissions by controlling how they advertise their available services and portray the objectives of their school, as demonstrated by Jabbar (2015, 2016).  If a school markets itself to high-achieving students as a rigorous college-prep curriculum, families and parents of special education students may be dissuaded from pursuing enrollment at that school (Marcell, 2010).  Charter schools that seek to create a uniform and cohesive school culture may not believe they can benefit from recruiting students that require additional accommodations that may not align with that particular school’s educational philosophy.  Even if a student with special education needs has gained a seat in a desired school, push-out mechanisms can threaten their long-term enrollment (Jabbar 2015).  The amalgamation of these factors results in an inequitable school choice process for special education students and their families.

Moving forward, both the RSD and OBSP in New Orleans should work toward providing more comprehensive resources for families to understand what schools will work best with their student’s IEP and additional needs to ensure the ability of special education students to equitably benefit from school choice.  This could be facilitated by the creation of a central office for special education students that not only aids in the selection process, but ensures that the independently run schools operate in accordance with legal framework.  Similarly, an organization of this nature could facilitate better resource sharing across schools to better serve all special education students and enable school administrators to more comfortably market to special education students and their families without concern that they cannot logistically support these students.  However, a balance must be struck between continuing to allow these independent schools to implement innovative practices for effecting overall school reform and taking steps toward creating continuity through both the RSD and OPSB.

While the research presented here investigated the school choice process, great consideration must also be given to the quality of the special education services that New Orleans’ public schools provide and how these conditions may perpetuate further inequities.  These two issues cannot be isolated from one another; if schools provide families with more information about special education services and create a more equitable school choice process, but the quality of the schools that special education students attend and the services they receive are lacking, special education students will still be shortchanged by their schools.  Furthermore, inequities that exist for other groups in New Orleans’ public schools (Welsh et al., 2016; Parvis, 2015) cannot be overlooked in improving the school choice process.

In reforming its public schools, New Orleans seeks to provide equitable educational opportunities for a student population that has historically been inadequately served.  Enabling families and students to make decisions about their schooling and creating a market-based system to promote increased school quality cannot achieve this equity if special education students remain disadvantaged in school choice.  As change to New Orleans’ public schools remains an ongoing, dynamic process, greater consideration of the needs of special education students now can lead to positive future change and sustainable success in school choice.

Limitations    

A major limitation of this work stems from the lack of field work conducted to obtain qualitative data collected for the express purpose of this research question.  Without the opportunity to engage with individuals in New Orleans and its public schools, I must rely on the work of others to establish an understanding of the city’s school choice process.  A more comprehensive understanding of how families experience the selection and application process in New Orleans’ schools of choice would be made possible by an extensive study that follows families through the process and engages them at each phase.  Additionally, the information utilized here comes from a variety of sources that have been produced over the past few years. However, since the reform process in New Orleans is an active and ongoing process, changes that occur most recently may not be reflected in the literature.  Media attention regarding special education in New Orleans may be prompting current or near future projects for improvement that have yet to be studied.  Furthermore, as each family and student experiences school choice in a different way, the findings here can only reflect the larger themes that emerge as opposed to the unique experiences of the individual.  Families with neutral or positive experiences navigating school choice in New Orleans with special education in mind may not be as compelled to report these circumstances in the same manner that families with negative experiences may, thus excluding these schools and their students from the data collection.  With school choice becoming a tactic of school reform that has gained both ardent supporters and staunch opponents, biases can emerge in the qualitative data and the way it is presented.  Following the evolution of New Orleans’ public schools into the coming years may reveal positive changes that have been developed after consideration of early outcomes.

Works Cited

Adamson, Frank, Cook-Harvey, Channa, & Darling-Hammond, Linda. (2015). Whose Choice? Student Experiences and outcomes in the New Orleans School Marketplace. Stanford, CA: Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.  Retrieved from https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/scope-report-student-experiences-new-orleans.pdf

Arce-Trigatti, P., Harris, D. N., Jabbar, H., & Lincove, J. A. (2015). Many options in New Orleans choice system: School characteristics vary widely. Education Next, 15(4), 25-33.

Byrne, A. (2013). What factors influence the decisions of parents of children with special educational needs when choosing a secondary educational provision for their child at change of phase from primary to secondary education? A review of the literature. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 13(2), 129-141. doi:10.1111/j.1471-3802.2011.01211.x

Dreilinger, Danielle.  (26 May 2015).  The Recent History of Special Education in New Orleans. The Times-Picayune.  Retrieved from http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2015/05/new_orleans_special_education_3.html

EnrollNOLA. (2016). EnrollNOLA Annual Report. Retrieved from https://oneappnola.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/2016-feb-annual-report.pdf

Goldhaber, D. D. (1997). School choice as education reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 79(2), 143.

Gross, Betheny, DeArmond, Michael, & Denice, Partrick.  Common Enrollment, Parents, and School Choice: Early Evidence from Denver and New Orleans.  Retrieved from http://www.crpe.org/sites/default/files/cpe-report-common-enrollment-denver-nola.pdf

Hourigan, R. M. (2014). Intersections between school reform, the arts, and special education: The children left behind. Arts Education Policy Review, 115(2), 35-38. doi:10.1080/10632913.2014.883892

Jabbar, Huriya. (2015).  How Do School Leaders Respond to Competition? Market-Based Competition and School Leader Strategies. Retrieved from http://educationresearchalliancenola.org/files/publications/Tech-Report-Final-w-cover.pdf

Jabbar, Huriya. 2016. “Selling Schools: Marketing and Recruitment Strategies in New Orleans.” Peabody Journal of Education 91(1):4-23.

Jones, S.L. (2010) The State of Public Education in New Orleans: Five Years After Hurricane Katrina.  New Orleans: The Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University.

Kahlenberg, R.D. & Potter, H. (2014). A Smarter Charter: Finding What Works for Charter Schools and Public Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Lincove, Jane Arnold, Cowen, Joshua M., & Imbrogno, Jason. (2016).  How Do Families Choose Between Public and Private Schools.  Retrieved from http://educationresearchalliancenola.org/files/publications/Education-Research-Alliace-New-Orleans-Policy-Brief-Public-Private-School-Choice.pdf

Louisiana Department of Education. (2015) Student Enrollment and Demographics. Retrieved from https://www.louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/katrina/final-louisana-believes-v5-enrollment-demographics22f9e85b8c9b66d6b292ff0000215f92.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Louisiana Legislature. (2003). Senate Bill No. 710, Act No. 9.  Regular Session, 2003.  Retrieved from https://legis.la.gov/Legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=818240

Marcell, E. A. (2010). Choice, charter schools, and students with disabilities: Special education enrollment in post-Katrina New Orleans charter schools. Harvard University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2010. 3446312.

Orleans Parish School Board. (2016). Orleans Parish School Board 2015-2016 Annual Report. Retrieved from http://opsb.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2016-OPSB-Annual-Report.pdf

Parvis, E. A. (2015). When choice is the only option: The new orleans all-charter school system and the inequality it breeds. Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 47(1), 280.

P.B. et al. v. Pastorek (Eastern District of Louisiana October 26, 2010).  Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_legacy_files/downloads/case/pb_v_pastorek.pdf

Rivkin, S. G., & Cullen, J. B. (2003). The role of special education in school choice. () University of Chicago Press. doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226355344.003.0004

Schnaiberg, L. & Lake, R.  (2015). Special Education in New Orleans: Juggling Flexibility, Reinvention, and Accountability in the Nation’s Most Decentralized School System. CRPE Portfolio.  Retrieved from http://www.crpe.org/sites/default/files/crpe-special-education-new-orleans-report_0.pdf

Teske, Paul, Fitzpatrick, Jody, & Kaplan, Gabriel. (2007)  Opening Doors: How Low-Income Parents Search for the Right School.  CRPE University of Washington.  Retrieved from http://www.crpe.org/sites/default/files/pub_crpe_open_jan07_0.pdf

Tremblay, P. (2013). Comparative outcomes of two instructional models for students with learning disabilities: Inclusion with co‐teaching and solo‐taught special education. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 13(4), 251-258. doi:10.1111/j.1471-3802.2012.01270.x

Vaughan, Debra, Mogg, Laura, Zimmerman, Jill, & O’Neill, Tara. (2011)  Transforming Public Education in New Orleans: The Recovery School District.  Cowen Institute, Tulane University.  Retrieved from http://www.coweninstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/History-of-the-RSD-Report-2011.pdf

Voltz, D. L., & Fore, C. (2006). Urban special education in the context of standards-based reform. Remedial and Special Education, 27(6), 329-336. doi:10.1177/0741932506027006020

Welsh, R. O., Duque, M., & McEachin, A. (2016). School choice, student mobility, and school quality: Evidence from post-Katrina New Orleans.11 (2), 150-176. doi:10.1162/EDFP_a_00183

Westervelt, Eric. (2014). Are NOLA Schools Failing Students with Disabilities? NPR.  Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/11/20/365282978/are-nola-schools-failing-students-with-disabilities

Wolf, N. L. (2011). A case study comparison of charter and traditional schools in New Orleans recovery school district: Selection criteria and service provision for students with disabilities. Remedial and Special Education, 32(5), 382-392. doi:10.1177/0741932510362220

Zimmerman, J. M., & Vaughan, D. Y. (2013). School choice outcomes in post-Katrina New Orleans. Journal of School Choice, 7(2), 163-181. doi:10.1080/15582159.2013.788959

Finding Where You Fit: Limitations for Students with Disabilities within the School Choice System

By Corinne Kentor

Abstract

Proponents of school choice argue that providing individualized educational models through magnet themes, voucher programs, and charter networks empowers parents and students to find their personal “best fit.” However, the rise of “no excuses” charter schools presents a dilemma for individuals with disabilities, who are implicitly and explicitly excluded from certain educational environments. This phenomenon reveals one of the central limitations of “school choice,” demonstrating the factors that limit the free expression of choice for marginalized individuals exhibiting emotional and cognitive disabilities. This paper will focus on charter schools that specifically market strict disciplinary policies and will explore how students with disabilities are included in and excluded from these environments.

Key terms: “no excuses,” neurodiversity, disability, special needs, special education, “school culture,” “fit.”

Methods

The following analysis includes a review of cogent literary sources dealing with the history of the charter school movement, as well as emergent analyses of the treatment of students with disabilities in disciplinary structures. The information and recommendations presented combine theoretical research with a review of journalistic sources dealing with the recent backlash against “no excuses” charter schools in an attempt to identify how public response to school discipline might inform our understanding of the relationship between bias, normativity, and school culture. To make best use of this online format, I have linked to several of these articles throughout my analysis, which provide a public context for the issues under discussion.

A Brief Overview of “School Choice” and the Rise of the Modern Charter School

In her 2010 book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, former policy maker and educational critic Diane Ravitch traces the origin of the school choice model, as well as its growing influence in the United States. As Ravitch explains, the motivation backing school choice initiatives has shifted over time. In the 1950s and 60s, “choice” was used as a proxy for the re-segregation of southern public schools; the very concept of “freedom of choice” was “tainted by [its] use as a conscious strategy to maintain state-sponsored segregation” (Ravitch 2010). Moving forward, the notion of choice was reframed by the writing of scholars like Milton Friedman, who were among the first to suggest a market-based approach to public education. Friedman and his colleagues envisioned a system in which schools helped to fulfill “the ultimate objective of society” by “maximiz[ing] the freedom of the individual or the family” through subsidized vouchers, which would allow underprivileged students to enroll in private institutions (Ravitch 2010). Over the course of the 20^th century, school choice systems were conceptualized as a means of empowering students and their parents and, at the same time, as a new approach to social and fiscal accountability inspired by the idea of a naturalized free-market economy.

While contemporary proponents of the choice model continue to laud concepts of parent/student voice and natural accountability, “school choice” in the 21^st century has expanded beyond Friedman’s original conceptual framework. Initially, “school choice” was designed to uphold the primacy of the individual. Today, the movement is geared more toward expanding how education is approached on a systemic level. The obliquely celebrated “individual” still motivates many modern choice proponents, but contemporary reforms focus increasingly on the development and selection of individualized school cultures. This culture model is explicitly distinct from the “catch-all” nature of the public education system, which, in accordance with American laws, traditions, and philosophies, is designed to serve any and all students in the United States (Yell 1998).

In part, this shift is due to the exponential rise of charter schools and charter networks. Like Friedman’s voucher program, charter schools were initially designed to “break the iron grip of the adult interest groups, unleash the positive power of competition, and achieve academic excellence” overall (Ravitch 2010). Under this system, motivated private organizations and collectives could establish a new school supported by public funds and held accountable to basic performance standards. As Ravitch explains, charters could be “run by for-profit firms or by nonprofit organizations,” and the renewal of their charter would ultimately depend on whether or not they demonstrated the success and sustainability of their individual pedagogical model (Ravitch 2010). Like vouchers, charters were designed to hold schools accountable not to standards or mandates, but to the parents who would actively choose to enroll their children. However, unlike vouchers, which simply helped students navigate among public and private institutions, charters were also developed to allow educators to change the homogenous face of public education, and to fund some of the “best new ideas” coming to classrooms across the United States.

While early charter schools, established under a model introduced by Albert Shanker in the 1990s, were designed to give educators on the ground floor more administrative autonomy, modern charters are run (and, in part, funded) by increasingly diverse groups, from corporate behemoths, to hedge funds, to dynamic and independent taste-makers (Cohen 2015). Beyond this shift in governance and leadership, what distinguishes the charter school of the 21^st century from the charter school of the 1990s is primarily the express incorporation of “school culture,” which is designated by the managing group or individual and written in to the charter’s mission statement.

As the management of charter networks has diversified, the importance of “school culture” has increased. Charter leaders include former school teachers, as well as hedge fund managers, politicians, and businessmen, among others (Strauss 2014). In some cases, experienced educators will bond together and apply for a school charter to ensure their autonomy and to develop team-based leadership practices (Ravitch 2010). In other instances, though, charter communities will form around an ambiguous philosophy or a rational business model. These charters do not reflect Shanker’s ideal of “teacher-led autonomous schools within schools…tasked with solving important problems of pedagogy and curriculum” (Ravitch 2010). Instead, modern charters uphold the emerging concept of “innovative education” more broadly. In these cases, “innovation,” rather than empowering teachers to make administrative decisions, is cultivated from the outside in.

Choice proponents posit that this diversification continues to uphold parent and student autonomy by allowing families a “shop” for the “best fit” institution. While charters were initially designed to put private and public dollars behind innovative educators, they have since been re-conceptualized as a means of diversifying the different types of schools included in the American public education system. However, not all individuals are afforded the same set of options (Strauss 2014). Rather than increasing choice, the express incorporation of school culture, in some cases, works to exclude students who do not fit a charter’s particular model.

“No excuses” charter schools, for example, utilize a strict disciplinary structure that disadvantages students who struggle to adapt to the self-described “militaristic” expectations placed upon them. While leaders in these institutions are quick to assert the superiority of their model (indeed, some have encouraged the public to imagine a future in which every urban school is a “no excuses” charter school), they also acknowledge the fact that not every child will “fit” the school’s distinctive culture. In particular, students with emotional or cognitive disabilities often fail to attain the appropriate level of acculturation that will allow them to succeed in a “no excuses” environment (McKinney 2016). By covertly excluding students under the guise of “fit” and “culture,” these schools limit the choices of individuals with disabilities, countering one of the underlying motivations of the school choice movement, which is designed to hold schools to higher standards and, at the same time, to empower previously disempowered groups.

In the following pages, I will explore how no excuses charter schools interact with students with disabilities and/or students exhibiting “neurodiversity.” I will investigate (1) the responsibilities of the public school system to provide adequate services to students with disabilities, (2) how concepts of “school culture” in some cases serve to exclude these individuals, and (3) which factors are influencing the treatment of students with disabilities in the charter school system.

A Qualification: It is important to note that charter schools vary widely in their style and in their enrollment statistics. There are certainly some individual charter schools (and, indeed, entire networks) that help to serve students with disabilities. These schools work hard to meet the diverse needs of their student body, investing substantial material and immaterial resources in specialized programming and services. However, there are also many charter schools that, through a combination of practice and policy, are failing to adequately serve this marginalized subset of American students and families. I will attempt to outline how these schools reflect on a larger systemic strain placed on individuals with disabilities. While there are clear exceptions to the generalizations I will make in this analysis, I have chosen to focus on charter schools that exemplify a trend of exclusion that compromises the ideals of the school choice system as a whole, demonstrating how the model fails to measure up to the paragon of student and parent autonomy lauded by choice proponents.  

What is Required? A brief overview of disability legislation

Right around the time that Albert Shanker began promoting a new form of charter-supported schooling, the U.S. federal government took a substantial step toward supporting the educational rights of students with disabilities. Until 1990, the rights of these students were protected largely by Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EACHA or EHA), a piece of legislation passed in the 1970s that provided funding for basic special education services. The EHA explicitly outlined the rights of parents to dispute how children with disabilities were being treated and/or supported in the public school environment (Lipsky and Alan 1997). This provision ultimately became an important component of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which was implemented in 1990. The IDEA is, technically speaking, a reauthorization of the EHA, only with a new name and several important developments dealing with the rights of students with disabilities and/or students who require special services to succeed in school (Lipsky and Alan 1997).

Briefly, the IDEA covers the official identification of students with disabilities, as well as the legal responsibility of schools to provide adequate support for these individuals (Yell 1998). Both in its earlier iteration as the EHA and in its contemporary form, this act has focused on transmitting information to parents and families about disability rights and providing them with a clear pathway for self-advocacy. The EHA implemented a policy requiring “that all handicapped children be identified, evaluated, and offered educational services,” a specification that recognized children with disabilities as an underserved population and strove to correct that imbalance (Levesque 2014). When the EHA transformed into the IDEA in 1990, the legal language became even more explicit, requiring schools to provide “a free appropriate public education” that included “special education and related services designed to meet [the] unique needs [of students with disabilities]” and that established means of measuring “the effectiveness of efforts to educate children with disabilities” (IDEA 20 U.S.C.A. 1400 2004). Later, an amendment to the IDEA underscored the importance of Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) “based on peer-reviewed research” that would ensure students with special needs were offered a well-designed and personalized course of instruction (Levesque 2014). This addendum recognized the diversity inherent among students with disabilities and strove to protect a child’s right to individualized instruction.

Above all else, the EHA and the IDEA aimed to dismantle the stigma associated with disability in schools and, at the same time, to ensure that marginalized students were receiving the services to which they were legally entitled as citizens of the United States (Annino 1999). Over the last forty years, legal legislation dealing with the rights of students with disabilities in public schools has been primarily motivated by the desire to “foster inclusion” within the American public education system (Levesque 2014). In the next section, we will explore how some charter schools undermine this mission through strict disciplinary policies that covertly exclude neurodiverse individuals.

Understanding Disability Rights Within the School Choice System

Though it was designed and implemented in a different educational era, the IDEA still protects the rights of students with disabilities in the emerging choice-based school system. According to Sec. 300.208-209, charter schools founded under the purview of the local education agency (LEA) are required to “serve children with disabilities…in the same manner” as their public counterparts (IDEA Sec.300.208-209 2004). However, charter schools enroll significantly fewer students with special needs (Strauss 2014). In some cases, charter schools will directly deny a student enrollment based on his or her disciplinary record, a practice that targets students prone to disruptive behaviors (Estes 2000). In other cases, charter school administrators might suggest that the child simply falls outside of the purview of their particular instructional model, utilizing oblique concepts of “fit” and “school culture” to discourage parents from enrolling students with disabilities. The rising import of “no excuses” culture augments the influence of these practices, excluding students with disabilities from a growing number of publically funded institutions and limiting their agency within the school choice system.

Figures 1-2: Two examples of under-enrollment of students with disabilities in charter schools, as compared with local public schools, featuring data gleaned from examination of school choice systems in Connecticut and Massachusetts.  

Original source: Connecticut State Department of Education

Original source: “Students with Disabilities in Urban Massachusetts Charter Schools”

Recently, several large charter networks have come under fire for employing extreme disciplinary tactics. Three of the best known networks—Success Academy, Achievement First, and the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP)—self identify as “no excuses” schools. Under the “no excuses” model, teachers and administrators require their students to adhere to strict codes of conduct. Eva Moskowitz, the founder and director of Success Academy, posits that schools are responsible for “convey[ing] the critical message to students and parents that certain behavior is inconsistent with being a member of the school community,” invoking language related to belonging and collective responsibility (Moskowitz 2015). Moskowitz raises cogent concerns about the violence and in-fighting that disrupts the school day and limits the ability of an educator to “ensure a nurturing and productive learning environment” (Moskowitz 2015). These arguments reflect the real concerns of real teachers and leaders, who are tasked with establishing a safe space for their students.

However, the discipline model that Mozkowitz outlines, which is in vogue in many “no excuses” charter networks, does not merely aim to impose order and reduce instances of physical violence. Rather, the tactics employed in charter networks like Success Academy, which often self-identify as “militaristic,” generate an expectation of orderliness that undermines the authentic experience of various students with special needs. In particular, the “no excuses” model does not accommodate neurodiversity within the student body and excludes the experiences of individuals diagnosed with emotional or behavioral disorders. Disciplinarian charter schools ask students to embody various physical and behavioral habits: to be successful, students must sit in a certain way, follow specific conduct codes, and limit their emotional expressions (or, to use the pejorative term, “outbursts”). In other words, students are expected to master physical, verbal, and temperamental routines. For many young people who exhibit emotional disabilities—such as those on the autism spectrum—these expectations are not merely difficult to master; oftentimes, such a behavioral paragon falls outside the non-normative behavior practices that are important components of the way a child with special needs communicates with and responds to surrounding people and stimuli (Picciuto 2016).

As Moskowitz’s commentary exemplifies, charter schools often take great pride in an individualized pedagogical approach, which is directly tied to a system of behavior or social interaction. While this model can certainly serve many students, and serve them well, students with emotional and cognitive disabilities struggle to fit in to such a rigid culture. Students with severe disabilities rarely enroll in these schools to begin with, as they are deemed a poor “fit” for the charter model (Zollers and Ramanathan 1998). Most troubling, however, are the non-classified students—those who have not been specifically identified as students with special needs, but who nonetheless exhibit behaviors “no excuses” schools deem objectionable—who enroll and then fail to adapt to the culture of a particular charter. These students often find themselves the subject of excessive disciplinary action.

A poignant contemporary example comes from a recent New York Times article by Kate Taylor, which describes a young girl enrolled at a Success Academy charter school who “struggled to adjust to [the school’s] strict rules” and “racked up demerits for not following directions or keeping her hands folded in her lap” (Taylor 2015). Her name was ultimately “one of 16 placed on a list” created by the school principal identifying certain students as “Got to Go” scholars (Taylor 2015). The list, which sparked outrage in the larger charter community, was categorically condemned by several leaders. However, the motivation behind the principal’s action was staunchly upheld. Success Academy continues to tout its disciplinary policies, with Moskowitz explaining, “even very young students can be dangerous” and require extreme interventions (Jorgensen 2016). Success Academy’s infamous “Got to Go” list epitomizes the way in which the concept of “school culture” has been conflated, in many cases, with impractical policies that only serve a small subset of students who are already “exemplary” scholars from a disciplinary standpoint.

Within this framework, students exhibiting neurodiversity are sometimes forced out of a particular school under the guise of “fit.” Zollers and Ramanathan ascribe situations like these in part to a growing practice of “out counseling,” in which discriminatory enrollment practices are disguised as conversations about fit and student success. These conversations can range from the overt—Zollers and Ramanathan describe one parent who was told that the school “really couldn’t deal with this kind of kid” and would probably “just kick him out later”—to the implicit (Zollers and Ramanathan 1998). Some students, like those on Success Academy’s “Got to Go” list, are simply singled out for discipline over and over and over again, until parents decide to voluntarily withdraw their children and to place them in a more welcoming environment. In other cases, administrators or counselors will expressly advise parents to find a school that will offer a more appropriate “culture” for their child.

In January of this year, 13 families filed an official complaint against the Success Academy charter network for precisely these reasons. According to another article published by Kate Taylor in the New York Times, “the complaint,” which was filed with the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, “described how students with disabilities were repeatedly suspended or made to repeat grades and how administrators in several cases urged parents to remove their students from the school” (Taylor 2016). Beyond this, the families alleged that the network “repeatedly violated federal law by not offering students with disabilities alternative instruction when they were suspended,” and failed to investigate “if the behavior leading to [these] suspensions was caused by disabilities and whether additional services were needed” (Taylor 2016). These complaints epitomize the way in which charter school networks employing strict disciplinary policies furtively work to disadvantage students with disabilities. The practices under investigation are not only unethical; they also defy central components of the IDEA, which stipulates that schools must (1) consult with the child’s parent, the LEA, and “relevant members of the IEP (Individual Education Program) Team” to investigate whether or not the objectionable behavior “was a manifestation of the child’s disability,” and (2) provide appropriate services if “a child with a disability has been removed from his or her current placement for ten school days in the same school year” (IDEA Topic: Discipline 2004). According to the case filed against Success Academy, network schools have failed to accommodate students with disabilities on both counts, forcing parents to consider alternative schooling options.

Discipline strategy as it reflects on school culture thus exemplifies one of the key ways in which charter schools fail to accommodate students with disabilities, whether or not they are officially classified as such. In some cases, schools will directly discourage parents from enrolling their children. More often, though, charter schools will simply set students up for failure by employing unforgiving discipline tactics that do not take disability into account (Estes 2000, Taylor 2016: multiple sources). While these actions can be malicious and pecuniary, as discussed earlier, they can also be examples of a misguided system that prioritizes a definition of “fit” that inevitably excludes an already marginalized group of learners. “No excuses” schools may not specifically look to drive away students with disabilities, but this does not negate the fact that these publically funded institutions, through their very philosophy, fail to consider how young children with varying abilities and accommodations might interact with a particular behavioral model. “School culture” is thus manipulated to severely limit the choices of families with children exhibiting behavioral differences.

Motivations for Direct Exclusion

In many cases, schools that practice “out-counseling” do not specifically look to exclude marginalized students, but rather aim to develop homogenous behavioral practices that implicitly preclude children with emotional and cognitive disabilities from successfully integrating into the expressed culture of the institution. However, there are several factors that might encourage schools to actively exclude students with disabilities, including fiscal pressures and the stress of a high-stakes testing environment. The first applies primarily to cases of extreme disability, while the second becomes more pertinent when we consider the idea of neurodiversity that exists outside of official disability diagnoses. In order to understand how charter school enrollment affects school choice on a systemic level, in addition to the personal components discussed earlier, we will focus our attention on the funding argument, which can help us to draw connections between individual stories and larger issues associated with the market-model of choice culture.

Special education programs are incredibly costly (Education Finance Branch 2015). While the reauthorization of the IDEA in 2004 pledged a 40% federal subsidization of special education costs, this goal has yet to be achieved. Special education staffing and programming continues to cost local education agencies substantial funds. As a result, students with disabilities can pose an enormous financial challenge for strapped schools and districts, and many administrators view these students as an economic burden to be avoided at all costs (Zollers and Ramanathan 1998).

Charter schools, particularly those managed by private companies, are disincentivized from enrolling students who present with disabilities (Estes 2000). While these schools are able to successfully serve students with mild disabilities, more complicated diagnoses often come with higher price tags, and some districts and networks claim that they lack both the proper infrastructure and the requisite funding to properly serve these students and their families (Zollers and Ramanathan 1998). For-profit institutions are clearly motivated by fidelity to their financial sponsors, but this does not make their circumspection on the subject of special education an anomaly within the free choice school system. Public (i.e. not-for-profit) charter schools express similar concerns (Prothero 2014). The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools claims that “a factor that influences the amount of dollars available to support special education and related services in charter schools is the practical reality that, on average, charter schools operate with less funding than traditional public schools,” pointing to disparities in localized funding initiatives that disadvantage charter networks (Rhim, O’Neill, et al 2015). Because charter schools work “without a district-like infrastructure, and often with less public money than regular district-run schools,” they struggle to meet the needs of students with severe disabilities, who represent a substantial financial investment (Prothero 2014). Whereas specialized programs designed for students with disabilities are often subsidized in a public school context, the details of funding these same individuals in a charter school—which is subject to less regulation and designed to run independently—requires an independent investment on the part of the school, a distinction that many charter leaders view as untenable (Rhim, O’Neill, et al 2015). As a result, charter schools are often more willing to make exceptions for students with mild disabilities, and are more prone to “out-counseling” those requiring expensive interventions.

It is easy, at first glance, to sympathize with the monetary concerns charter leaders express in reference to special education programming. However, it would be irresponsible to ignore the underlying inequity that accompanies enrollment disparities among charter schools and their traditional public school counterparts. While they may receive support from outside donors and patrons, charter schools are supported by federal funds and federal spaces (Educational Finance Branch 2015). In electing to provide only the most basic special education services, charter schools foist an additional burden on local public schools, which, by law, cannot practice the same kind of “out-counseling” (Yell 1998). When charter schools fail to accommodate students with special needs, they limit the opportunities of students with disabilities and, at the same time, exacerbate fiscal inequities among different public schools incorporated in the choice system.

Conclusion

While charter schools are distinct emblems of the school choice system, the ways in which specific schools and networks interact with students with disabilities undermines the concept of student and parent autonomy. The rise of charter schools has been accompanied by the elevation of “school culture,” which can be used to exclude neurodiverse students and to augment the stigma of disability. As a result, students with special needs are excluded from a definitive component of the modern school choice system. As charter programs continue to expand, these individuals will be left with fewer and fewer options. Examination of the treatment of students with disabilities by particular charter schools and charter networks thus exemplifies the limits of the school choice system, which is not equally accessible for all children in the American public school system. Moving forward, charter schools must expand their enrollment policies to accommodate neurodiverse students, a shift that will require a reevaluation of the definition and importance of “school culture.”

Works Cited

Annino, Paolo G. “The New IDEA Regulations: The Next Step in Improving the Quality of Special Education.” Mental and Physical Disability Law Reporter, Vol. 23, No. 3 (May-June 1999): 439-442.

Cohen, Rachel M. “The Charter School Business.” The American Prospect. December 22, 2015. http://prospect.org/article/charter-school-business. Accessed May 1, 2016.

Educational Finance Branch. Public Education Finances: 2013. United States Census Bureau. (June 2015).

Estes, Mary Bailey. “Charter Schools and Students with Special Needs: How Well Do They Mix?” Education and Treatment of Children, Vol. 23, No. 3 (August 2000): 369-380.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. (2004). 20 U.S.C. § 1401 et seq.

Jorgensen, Jillian. “Eva Moskowitz Defends Success Academy Charter Chain From Critics.” Observer News & Politics. January 22, 2016. http://observer.com/2016/01/eva-moskowitz-defends-success-academy-charter-chain-from-critics/. Accessed April 22, 2016.

Levesque, Roger J. R. “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.” Encyclopedia of Adolescence. (New York: 2011): 1420-1422.

Lipsky, Dorothy Kerzner and Alan Gartner. Inclusion and School Reform: Transforming America’s Classrooms. (Maryland: 1997).

McKinney, Joseph R. “Charter Schools: A New Barrier for Children with Disabilities.” Educational Leadership. ACSD. October 1996.   http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct96/vol54/num02/Charter-Schools@-A-New-Barrier-for-Children-with-Disabilities.aspx. Accessed April 30, 2016.

Moskowitz, Eva. “Orderliness in School—What a Concept.” The Wall Street Journal. March 14, 2016. http://www.wsj.com/articles/orderliness-in-schoolwhat-a-concept-1457998034. Accessed May 5, 2016.

Picciuto, Elizabeth. “The Don’t Want an Autism Cure.” The Daily Beast. February 25, 2015. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/25/they-don-t-want-an-autism-cure.html. Accessed May 5, 2016.

Prothero, Arianna. “Special Education Charter Schools Vulnerable to Funding Shortfalls.” Education Week. November 20, 2014. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/charterschoice/2014/11/special_education_charter_schools_especially_vulnerable_to_funding_gaps.html. Accessed April 30, 2016.

Rabe Thomas, Jacqueline.  “Are charter schools cherry-picking their students?”  The CT Mirror.  March 5, 2012.  http://ctmirror.org/2012/03/05/are-charter-schools-cherry-picking-their-students/.  Accessed May 6, 2016.

Ravitch, Diane. “Choice: The Story of an Idea.” The Death and Life of the Great American School System. (New York: Basic Books, 2010). 114-157.

Rhim, Lauren Morando, Paul O’Neill, Amy Ruck, Kathryn Huber, and Sivian Thuchman. Getting Lost While Trying to Follow the Money: Special Education Finance in Charter Schools. National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools. November 2015.

Strauss, Valerie. “A dozen problems with charter schools.” The Washington Post. May 20, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/05/20/a-dozen-problems-with-charter-schools/. Accessed April 29, 2016.

Taylor, Kate. “At a Success Academy Charter School, Singling Out Pupils Who Have ‘Got to Go.’” The New York Times. October 29, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy-charter-school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FMoskowitz%2C%20Eva%20S.&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=collection&_r=0. Accessed May 2, 2016.

Taylor, Kate. “Filing Alleges Bias at Success Academy Network Against Students Disabilities.” The New York Times. January 20, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/nyregion/filing-says-success-academy-network-discriminated-against-students-with-disabilities.html?_r=0. Accessed May 2, 2016.

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. “Topic: Discipline.” Building the Legacy: IDEA 2004. October 5, 2006. http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/%2Croot%2Cdynamic%2CTopicalBrief%2C6%2C. Accessed April 27, 2016.

Wilkens, Christian P.  “Students with Disabilities in Urban Massachusetts Charter Schools.”  Teachers College Record.  (April 2011).

Yell, Mitchell L. The Law and Special Education. (New Jersey: 1998).

Zigmond, Naomi: “Special Education Revisited: A Response to Zollers and Ramanathan.” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 81, No. 3 (November 1999): 228-234.

Zollers, Nancy J. and Arun K. Ramanathan: “For-Profit Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities: The Sordid Side of the Business of Schooling.” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 1998): 297-304.