Marketing "Diversity": School District Policy in the Shifting Context of Public Education

• In Event: 60.039 - Politics of Racialization in the City

Abstract

Today’s public schools confront a shifting landscape of neoliberal globalization. This study examines district administrators’ and school board members’ meaning making around one practice embraced as a response to these changes: the marketing of diversity. Drawing on interpretative policy analysis and interview data from 37 district leaders in two medium-sized urban school districts, I find that district leaders turn to marketing practices for the promise these hold to reframe district “diversity” as positive. Revealing the contradictory nature of this response, support for these policies reflects discourses of community and inclusion in addition to marketization and individual interest. Yet, marketing positioned the schools as for White middle class students, limiting the possibilities for creating inclusive, community-supported schools.

Author

• Erica Owyang Turner, University of Wisconsin - Madison