A Literature Review of Latino Engagement in School Choice Policies

• In Event: 41.030 - The Politics of Neoliberal Educational Policies and Equal Educational Opportunity: Empirical and Conceptual Examinations

Abstract

Education reform advocacy organizations (ERAOs), political action committees (PACs), and charter management organizations (CMOs) have directed and funded their school choice marketing campaigns to attract the growing Latino population. In response to the dissatisfaction in quality and outcomes of public schools, some Latino parents are opting into charter schools because they are presented as an innovative schooling option that is responsive to cultural needs and/or will better prepare their children for college compared to district-run public schools. Latino families are often portrayed in mainstream media and policy discourses as staunch supporters of school choice policies.
This comprehensive literature review suggests that the terrain is more complex because choice policies rest on an uneven economic, cultural, and political terrain that masks the increasingly unequal educational opportunities characteristic of market-oriented education reform. The earlier and still-dominant areas of the academic literature gives attention to the achievement of Latino students in charter schools and voucher programs (Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), 2013; Leal, Bohte, Polinard, Wenzel, & Winkle, 2010) and the family and school demographic profiles (Buckley & Sattin-Bajaj, 2011; Sattin-Bajaj, 2012; Villavicencio, 2013), while another strand of case studies focuses on the cultural pedagogy and curriculum in charter schools (Argothy, 2010; Dyer, 2005; Joseph, 2012; Medina, 2008; Rodriguez, 2006; Webster & Mulfinger, 2011; Whiting & Feinauer, 2011). A small, but growing number of studies have examined national policy actors and local politics that contextualize and disrupt hegemonic perceptions of Latino engagement (and disengagement) in education reform, such as neoliberal education policy (Dávila, 2004; Valenzuela, 2005) and the racial and ethnic politics (Martinez, 2008; Montano & Aoki, 2011; Rosen & Mehan, 2003).
This research provides various nuanced statistical methods to understand the mixed achievement results as well as charter school advocates’ and participants’ perspectives on the potential for cultural responsiveness gained through autonomy; however, less is known about its impact on Latinos who do not participate in, or even resist, market-oriented school choice reforms. In addition, this literature review examines the few existing studies on the ways choice reforms can produce stratification and foster inequality within the Latino community as well as between Latinos and other racial and ethnic groups. The celebration of culturally responsive pedagogies and the aggregation of data highlight some of the benefits of charter schools for certain segments of the Latino population, yet the limited scope, lack of disaggregated data, and disconnect from broader research on school choice, such as studies on the Black community’s participation in school choice reform, separates empirical findings from critical understandings of external policy actors and political economic factors. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research directions, primarily the need to diversify conceptual frameworks and methodological tools to deepen an analysis of the power and inequality underpinning Latino engagement in school choice reforms.

Author

• René Espinoza Kissell, University of California - Berkeley