Growing Up and Going to School in Different Urban Spaces

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: School Climate Factors: An Examination of Multiple Perspectives

Abstract

Current efforts to promote school choice to access a quality education have turned significant numbers of urban children into migrant learners. This case study employs a framework of the geography of opportunity and multiple methods to explore the impact of student migration on low-income African American and Latino fourth graders who attend the World Citizens School, a newly developed private school in an affluent part of Center City. Though seen as part of the neoliberal restructuring of urban education, the WCS represented an exemplar of educational entrepreneurship that was structured as a near total institution organizing substantial segments of students’ daily lives. It also served as a ‘racial safe space’ for students, where their cultures and academic achievement were normalized.

Authors

• K. Milam Brooks, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Pamela Anne Quiroz, University of Illinois at Chicago