Race, Geography, and School Choice Policy: A Critical Analysis of Detroit Students’ Suburban School Choices

The purpose of this study is to advance our thinking about race and racism in geospatial analyses of school choice policy. To do so, we present a critical race spatial analysis of Detroit students’ suburban school choices. To frame our study, we describe the racial and spatial dynamics of school choice, drawing in particular on the concepts of opportunity hoarding and predatory landscapes. We find that Detroit students’ suburban school choices were circumscribed by racial geography and concentrated in just a handful of schools and districts. We also find notable differences between students in different racial groups. For all Detroit exiters, their schools were significantly more segregated and lower quality than those of their suburban peers. We propose future directions for research on families’ school choices as well as school and district behavior at the intersection of race, geography, and school choice policy.

The Shape of Educational Equity

This chapter provides an overview of the benefits of utilizing geographic information systems (GIS) to explore the intersections of school choice policy, educational equity, space, and race. The author discusses the theory of racial space, a framework for understanding the complex interactions between spatial processes and race. Additionally, the author offers an overview of GIS functionality and discusses research that incorporates GIS as a tool to examine the role of charter schools in shaping educational opportunities and outcomes across neighborhoods, cities, and states. Finally, this chapter will introduce emerging research areas and interdisciplinary research approaches, including advanced geospatial techniques, used to examine the intersections of geography and educational equity.

Charting the Rise of School Choice across Canadian Provinces: A Policy Index

This article introduces and discusses the findings of the Canada School Choice Policy Index (CSCPI). This is the first index of its kind that measures the development of school choice policies across the Canadian provinces from 1980 to 2020 using eight unique indicators of choice. In contrast to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the CSCPI reveals that although Canada has witnessed an increase in school choice over time, this increase has largely been contained within public education systems rather than in the expansion of private education options. Our findings raise the importance of future research to address growing choice in public education systems across the provinces, in addition to choice in the private sphere.

School Counselors’ Assessment of the Legitimacy of High School Choice Policy

Drawing on interviews with 88 middle school counselors tasked with implementing New York City’s high school choice policy, we show that counselors largely question the policy’s legitimacy and the equity of the high school assignments it produces. By highlighting issues of transparency and procedural fairness that threaten counselors’ acceptance of school choice policy, we offer lessons for policymakers and practitioners about how policy design and communication affect policy legitimacy and, as a result, implementation.

Ideas and the Politics of School Choice Policy: Portfolio Management in Philadelphia

We examine the role of ideas in the politics of school choice policy and situate our study within scholarship that understands frames and logics as types of ideas operating in the foreground and background of policy debates. Our data are from a case study of political contention over portfolio management reform (in which a central office oversees a network of schools operating under varying forms of governance) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We find that frames and counterframes deployed by stakeholders are resonant with societal-level logics of community localism, market transaction, and state bureaucratic administration. For proponents of portfolio reform, diagnostic frames are drawn from logics of community and state, while prognostic frames are resonant with a market logic. For opponents, the association is flipped: diagnostic counterframes challenge a market logic, and logics of community and state inform prognostic counterframes. Our study demonstrates how ideational processes shape political contention in education reform.

Closure and the roles of student performance and enrollment characteristics: A survival analysis of charter schools in Ohio’s largest urban counties

In this study, we seek to contribute to the literature on traditional charter school (TCS) closure by examining the potential relationships among racial and socioeconomic enrollment characteristics, TCS age and early adopter status, student achievement and the likelihood of closure within Ohio’s “Big 8” Urban Counties (OBEUC). Using life tables and binary logistic regression, we examined 3,204 TCS school years (424 TCS) in OBEUC from the arrival of TCS in 1998 through 2015 to assess these relationships. While the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) reports that poor academic performance is the second most cited reason for TCS closure, we find no evidence that student performance predicts TCS closure in OBEUC. However, we find that compared to TCS with integrated enrollments, TCS with predominantly White or Black enrollments face higher risks of closure in OBEUC, even when controlling for other factors. This lack of a connection between student performance and TCS closure calls into question the argument that TCS closure is evidence that the accountability function of school choice policy is working.