Imagining Schools as Communities in Arizona's Mature School Choice Market

• In Event: Parents' Perspectives and Concerns With School Choice

Abstract

Using ethnographic methods, I examine how 35 stakeholders, including parents, teachers, and administrators (all of whom are also parents) in one Arizona district public school and its surrounding neighborhood, which includes high-profile and “high-performing” charter schools, made meaning of school choice policies and programs. In particular, I analyze problems associated with how they understood, prioritized, and imagined notions of the “public” in education, charter schools, neighborhood schools, and communities more generally. Stakeholders viewed “community” in sometimes provocative, complicated, and contradictory ways that were both inclusive and exclusive. They understood that school choice policies have both positive and negative effects for public schools and other people’s children. Many were aware of potential segregating effects and overt self-sorting based on socioeconomic status.

Author

• Amanda U. Potterton, University of Kentucky