Rethinking Public and Private: Parents and Distinctive Schools of Choice

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

School choice increases both the number and the kinds of choices available to families. Schools of choice often self-consciously distinguish their unique approaches from traditional public schools. These distinctive approaches might include single-sex education, particular curricular models, as well as missions designed to appeal to the different linguistic, ethnic or religious identities of families. These distinctive approaches draw families into new communities around shared interests and preferences. On this level, school differentiation plays an important role in how choice works to build school improvement. At the same time, these schools also sort students along lines of race, class, language and other lines of difference. On this level, school differentiation plays a central role in concerns about school choice segregation.

These claims highlight a central question in school choice policy: how should we balance the interests of families in choosing distinctive schools—especially ones that affirm ethnic, linguistic or cultural identities—against arguments for a common, integrated school system? I explore this question in two ways. First, through a qualitative cross-case analysis of three distinctive schools, I illuminate the moral, ethical and political reasoning employed by parents who choose such school communities. I complicate our understanding of how parents choose schools by focusing on the moral and ethical processes of choosing schools, rather than the outcomes of parents’ choices. Second, through philosophical analysis, I position these reasons in conversation with normative questions about the legitimacy of such school spaces. That is, how might parents’ choices help us understand tensions between distinctive schools of choice and the broader civic aims of public schools? How might we judge and evaluate the proper limitations of school differentiation?

Author

• Terri S. Wilson, University of Colorado Boulder