“To Be Strict on Your Own”: Black and Latinx Parents Evaluate Discipline in Urban Choice Schools

The proliferation of urban “no-excuses” charter schools has been justified by arguing that Black and Latinx parents want strict discipline. In this article, we examine what discipline means to Black and Latinx families at two popular choice options: a no-excuses charter and two public Montessori magnets. We found that parents viewed discipline as more than rule-following, valuing also self-discipline and academic discipline. While no-excuses parents supported an orderly environment, many found the discipline restrictive. Parents in the Montessori schools, by contrast, praised student autonomy but questioned whether the freedom was preparing their students academically. Our findings reveal a gap between what Black and Latinx parents want and what choice schools and local school choice markets have on offer.

Referendums

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Please check back later for the full article. Referendums are puzzling because they are ubiquitous. Described in the theoretical literature as “veto-player institutions,” referendums are used as frequently by autocratic dictators as they are employed in constitutional democracies. As an institution championed by both Hitler and Churchill, as well as Augusto Pinochet and Woodrow Wilson it is not surprising that political scientists of an earlier generation felt that they defied all attempts to develop testable hypotheses and that referendums—in the words of Arend Lijphart from his 1984 book Democracies—“fail to fit any clear universal pattern.” More recently, beginning in the 1990s, however scholars from both historical institutional as well as rational choice schools have begun to develop testable propositions as well as they have advanced explanations as to the origins, practice and consequences of the increased use of referendums. Further, in addition to general theories of voting behaviour in referendums, an emerging literature has been established, which has investigated the policy consequences of referendums. These consequences include, lower levels of inequality, higher levels of trust in government and lower levels of public spending. Compared to an earlier period characterised by ideographic single country studies, and a general pessimism regarding the prospect of developing general theories, the study of referendums has entered a ‘revolutionary’ phase in the Kuhnian sense of the word. While no general paradigm has emerged, scholars are increasingly confident that general recurrent patterns exist and that it is possible to develop law-like statements about the emergence, use, and implications of the use of the referendum.

Marquette's Engineering Student Volunteer Outreach Program to Fifth Graders in the Public Schools, Choice Schools, and a Charter School in Milwaukee

ABSTRACTEducational efforts by the MSE profession can effect society in several ways: by producing more and better MSE graduates, by enhancing the Materials backgrounds of students from other engineering disciplines, by continuing education programs, and, in a nontraditional sense, by impacting the non-engineering community with outreach programs. I suggest that the effect on society of working with disadvantaged elementary school children, such as inner city fifth graders, is potentially far greater than efforts spent on non-engineering students already in college, high school students, or even middle school students. The Fifth Grade Volunteer Teaching Program (5GVP) at Marquette has attempted over the last ten years to inform Milwaukee's inner city fifth graders of the existence of an engineering career while showing them that science is something that they can actually do themselves and that the doing is fun. Maybe some of the roughly 5,000 students taught have stayed in the college prep track in math and science as a result of contact with our enthusiastic engineering student volunteers. Our lessons are self contained and heavy with things for the fifth graders to do themselves. One lesson, which portends Materials Science and Engineering, is called, “Phases of Matter”. This year I have expanded the 5GVP Program to include three of the Choice Schools operating in Milwaukee. These schools differ from the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and from each other significantly. Class sizes in the Choice Schools vary from much smaller than MPS to about the same size as MPS. The school buildings range from ramshackle to very modern. The Charter School has science labs and the Choice Schools do not. The Charter School is for profit and these two Choice Schools are not for profit.