The Rising Tide: Choice and Competition in Post-Katrina New Orleans Schools

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

During the past three decades, policymakers have tried to improve public education by introducing market mechanisms of choice and competition. In districts with school choice, school leaders are expected to respond to market pressures that arise through declining enrollments or the presence of nearby schools by working to improve the efficiency of their schools and the effectiveness of instruction (Wohlstetter, Smith, & Farrell, 2013). Choice is intended to be a “tide that lifts all boats” (Hoxby, 2002), benefitting not only the students who chose their schools, but also all other students in the district, through the mechanism of competition. Competition is thus essential to the claims that are made about the benefits of choice, yet there remain significant gaps in our knowledge about how market pressures actually shape socially and politically embedded education markets. In particular, we do not understand whether and how school leaders identify competitors or how they experience competition within different regulatory environments.
This study tries to understand how the expansion of school choice informs school-level actions. I draw on theoretical tools from sociology and politics to deepen our knowledge of how the neoclassical economic ideas of competition operate in education markets. I use concepts in economic sociology, which treats “economic worlds as social worlds,” (Fligstein, 1996), to examine how competition occurs through both social and economic mechanisms. Competitive markets in education operate through school leaders’ networks of perceived rivals, their ‘circuits’ of competitors (Gewirtz et al., 1995), or “perceptual set,” based on their ‘mental models’ of competition (Porac et al., 1989). Whom school leaders count as rivals—their perceived networks of competitors—constitutes the social structure of competition.
Unlike previous studies that have examined overall effects of competition, which has been measured using geographic distance, density, or student transfers between schools, this study measures competition using school leaders’ perceptions—the schools they actually name as competitors rather than those with whom we would expect them to compete. In focusing on New Orleans, the school system that most resembles a true market in the U.S., I also study market processes in education under nearly ideal conditions. Using multiple methods, including qualitative case study, network analysis, and statistical analysis of network data, I explore: (a) the perceptions and behaviors of school leaders in a competitive environment, and (b) the regulatory frameworks that shape this market environment. I draw on survey data from 89 school leaders (a 91% response rate) in New Orleans, case studies of 30 of these schools, and administrative data.

Author

• Huriya Jabbar, The University of Texas - Austin