Schools as Imagined Communities: Geographic Constraints in a Mature Education Market

• In Event: 47.061 - Geographic School Choice Research Across the Local-Global Scale

Abstract

In 1994, Arizona’s state legislature approved largely deregulated charter schools and open enrollment for all public school students in an effort to create a public school market. The state enrolls the second highest percentage of public school children in charter schools after Washington, DC. More than 500 charter schools are operating in Arizona, and its “Wild West” (Finn, Manno, & Vanourek, 2000) approach to free-market education through school choice is reflected in its charter schools, tax credit programs for public and private schools, education savings accounts, and open enrollment policies. Further, the rapid growth of market-based nonprofit and for-profit Education Management Organization charter schools (EMOCs) in Arizona raises questions about equitable student access (Ben-Porath, 2009; Author, 2013). Indeed, researchers have shown that competitive-based models for school choice have, in some cases, incentivized charter school groups to strategically arrange themselves in more affluent neighborhoods (e.g., Author, 2009; Robertson, 2015). This may exacerbate unequal access to school choice programs for students from different backgrounds.
Therefore, I address the topic of school choice’s ability or inability to overcome geographic constraints. I conducted a qualitative study of one Arizona district public school and its surrounding community including its EMOCs (with stakeholders who include parents, teachers, school leaders, students, and engaged community organizers), and utilized ethnographic methods to examine “on the ground” community effects of the state’s mature school choice system. This paper specifically discusses findings that revealed how relatively affluent parents at one high-profile EMOC were imagining and building their own neighborhood community near the school by purchasing real estate. They were knowingly or unknowingly re-creating boundaries where open enrollment had aimed to disrupt them (Friedman, 1955), revealing what may or may not be an unintended consequence of growing school choice policies and programs.
Theoretically, I discuss how social capital can include and exclude by bridging or bonding people from different backgrounds (Putnam, 2000). Some parents bonded via their ability to purchase homes in an increasingly expensive neighborhood—ironically in a system that, according to some theories, should help to disrupt boundaries, break down geographical and socioeconomic barriers, and create new bridges for people from different backgrounds. Data were collected for nearly two years and include fieldnotes from participant observations at formal and informal gatherings, analytic memos, 37 semi-structured interviews, and mapped demographic information. My analysis in this community uncovers how and why some stakeholders were imagining schools as communities (Cobb-Roberts, Dorn, & Shircliffe, 2006) through long-standing, market-oriented school choice programs. This paper contributes to the exploration of the critical relationship between geography and place and contemporary educational policy trends using mixed methods (Yoon & Lubienski, 2018) and takes into account “multiple dimensions of contextual factors” (Lubienski & Lee, 2017, p. 89). In practice, parents navigated complex social, cultural, economic, and political contexts as they engaged with, imagined, and, perhaps, re-imagined notions of public schooling, charter schools, neighborhood schools, communities, and public spaces (Altenhofen, Berends, & White, 2016).

Author

• Amanda U. Potterton, University of Kentucky