"We Don't Center Equity": Local Policymakers' Sensemaking of Gentrification and Education in Washington, DC

• In Event: Spatial Stratification. Nefarious Intent: The Impact of Neighborhood Racial Change on Enrollment and Student Assignment

Abstract

This study draws on sensemaking and critical race spatial analysis to examine how 18 Washington, D.C. locally elected officials and career bureaucrats responsible for planning, legislating, and directing the implementation of city-wide education reforms made sense of the multiple and competing messages and sources of influence they encountered about gentrification, public education, and educational equity. Findings explore how policymakers conceive of their roles as key actors within a system that has created the conditions under which gentrification is redefining who has a “right to the city” and conceptualize the intersecting relationships between race, space, and equity in gentrifying contexts.

Author

• Bradley Quarles, University of Maryland College Park/WestED