From Saviorism to Solidarity: White and Middle-Class Parents Reimagining Public Education

• In Event: Shifting Paradigms: Understanding Critical Policy Analysis as a Lens for Equity-Focused Education Policy Research

Abstract

Objectives

This ethnographic case study investigates a group of white and/or middle-class parents, Parents for Equity (PFE), and how they grapple with their relationship to privilege and power as they pursue racial justice and educational equity in a socio-political landscape shaped by neoliberal reforms, privatization, and racialized ideologies of school choice. The central research question guiding this study asks: How do white and/or middle-class parents understand and navigate their subjectivities and contradictions as they organize for educational equity within a socio-political context shaped by neoliberalism and racialized discourses of school reform?

Theoretical Framework

Drawing on critical policy analysis (Douglass et al., 2024), this paper situates parents' organizing within the intersecting crises of racial reckoning, neoliberal education reform, and the rollback of civil rights protections (Freidus, 2019; Meyer & Boyd, 200; Scott & Holme, 2016). The conceptual framework integrates political economy and the learning sciences to trace how ideologies of race, power, and equity are co-constructed across macro (policy), meso (organizational), and micro (individual and discursive) levels.
Methods and Data Sources
Data were collected over four years and include ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis of internal and public-facing communications. Using critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2001), the study examines how PFE parents negotiate discourses of allyship, public education, and accountability.

Results

Two key findings emerged: (1) PFE members struggled with endorsing a Black Lives Matter voter guide produced by Black leaders due to concerns over its alignment with pro-privatization politics, highlighting the tensions between racial solidarity and ideological commitments to public education; and (2) PFE publicly contested pro-charter discourse during community forums, rearticulating education as a public good and rejecting narratives that delegitimize their organizing based on their whiteness and privilege. Across both findings, PFE members engaged in strategic reflection and action to navigate critiques of white saviorism while asserting accountability and collective responsibility.

Significance

This paper contributes to the literature on parent organizing, racial equity, and the politics of school reform by showing how white and/or middle-class parents can engage in complex, contested, and contextually embedded racial justice work. It argues that accountability, rather than purity or perfection, is central to white and middle-class solidarity in education organizing and that purposeful, reflective engagement can support the reimagining of public education as a shared public good.

Author

• Talia S. Leibovitz, University of California - Berkeley