Oral Histories of Community Engagement in Market Reform: Black and Brown Perspectives on Schooling

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

Abstract

In the United States, the long struggle for equality and justice, particularly for African American, Latino, Native and immigrant communities, always included attempts to reform or transform the public schools (Perlstein, 2004; Rickford, 2016; Tyack, 1974). Elites, business leaders, and White community members have likewise focused on school politics and policies to maintain their privilege and reinforce racial and class hierarchies (Erickson, 2010). In this study, I draw from five oral histories of community activists, educators, and parents to learn about their desires and theories of action as they pursued efforts to improve educational access, quality, and outcomes for their communities. How did they attempt to improve the condition of schooling and of the schools through engaging the district, and when and why did they shift their focus towards alternative models outside the district? I uncover the multitude of ways they have thought about the role of local school districts, independent schools, and alternative models of schooling.
The insights from these oral interviews may help us better understand the growth of school choice policies and charter schools throughout the U.S., particularly in cities with large numbers of poor families and students of color. Scholarship on school choice policies have pointed to the influence of elite actors in promoting these types of market-based reforms (Engel, 2000; Shaker & Heilman, 2004). Yet, as Pedroni and Apple (2005) have noted, community activists and parents of Black students have pushed for and taken advantage of choice policies when they have felt that their local public schools have failed to provide an equitable education. The literature on the politics of school choice policies can be enriched by understanding the multiplicity of desires of inner-city poor parents and parents of color, as well as the tensions and contradictions in the theories of change that drive the community activists working on their behalf.
These struggles over the public schools continue today, and yet they have taken on new dimensions as increasing privatization in the public school system drives some community activists and educators to focus on the importance of defending the democratic promise of local school districts. As cities across the nation have closed neighborhood schools, primarily in Black and Latino areas, activists and educators have taken action against policies that they see as eroding support for their public schools (Lipman, 2013). While some community members and parents may continue to perceive the public schools as part of the problem and seek solutions outside the local school district, efforts to combat privatization and instead strengthen the public school system may be undermined by a lack of mutual understanding among multiple sectors of a community. This study helps to develop a more nuanced understanding of the complexity that results from the various desires and theories of action that have historically motivated parents and community activists to pursue efforts at improving local schools or to seek alternative models of schooling, perhaps within, perhaps outside of their local district.

Author

• Frances Free Ramos, University of California - Berkeley