No Choice at All: Learning From School Desegregation About the Dangers of "Choice"

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Learning From Desegregation, Magnet Schools, and Equity-Oriented Choices

Abstract

Supporters of tuition vouchers, charter schools, and privatized education often couch their arguments for these measures in the rhetoric of “choice,” “parental rights,” and “quality education.” These terms all have a troubling historical precedent in the school desegregation era in which pro-segregationists used these terms to perpetuate a dual system of segregated public schooling intended to keep Black students under-educated, subjugated, and powerless. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the historical linkages between the discourse of choice used in the desegregation era and current discourse of “choice” used to promote charter schools, privatized education, and tuition vouchers.

Authors

• Natalie G. Adams, The University of Alabama

• James H. Adams, Mississippi State University