Surviving the Education Marketplace: Vouchers, Institutional Logics, and the Polis

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Local Contexts, Conditions, and Concerns in School Choice

Abstract

This paper is an empirical investigation into ways in which educators in a small, newly formed private school navigate a voucher and school choice policy context, and make sense of policy and their own values in a local organization. In this case, school personnel can be seen attempting to retain their school’s politically progressive mission while participating in the education marketplace. Using a critical ethnographic study design, staff meetings, board meetings, and interviews provide data, analyzed through meaning field analysis (Carspecken, 1996) to infer institutional logics (Thornton et al., 2012) at play: professions, corporations, and community. Findings suggest school personnel work to ensure the school’s survival, while drawing on other corporation and professional logics to acquire financial resources and legitimacy.

Author

• Rodney S. Whiteman, Indiana University