Charter Schools as Postmodern Paradox: Rethinking Social Stratification in an Age of Deregulated School Choice

Abstract

For the last two-and-a-half years, authors Amy Stuart Wells, Alejandra Lopez, Janelle Scott, and Jennifer Jellison Holme have been engaged with a team of researchers in a comprehensive qualitative study of charter schools in ten California school districts. They have emerged from this study with a new understanding of how the implementation of a specific education policy can reflect much broader social changes, including the transformation from modernity to postmodernity. Given that much of the literature on postmodernity is theoretical in nature, this article invites readers to wrestle with the complexity that results when theory meets the day-to-day experiences of people trying to start schools. In their study, the authors examined how people in different social locations define the possibilities for localized social movements, and how they see the potential threat of greater inequality resulting from this reform within and among communities. They started with a framework that questioned how charter schools came into being at this particular time that is characterized by global economic developments and demands for a more deregulated state education system. This framework allowed the authors to examine the particularistic nature of a reform that defies universal definitions. Their purpose was not to definitively state whether or not charter school reform is "working," or whether or not it is leading to greater social stratification across broad categories of race, class, and gender. Rather, the authors focused on understanding how modern identities and postmodern ideologies converge and, thus, for whom charter school reform is "working," under what conditions, and on whose terms.

Statement of American Social Scientists of Research on School Desegregation to the U.S. Supreme Court in Parents v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County

“…155 Other socioeconomic factors can limit the actual choices families have when selecting schools, such as lack of transportation for students to attend the schools of their choice or working parents who are unable to leave work to visit schools. 156 Because white parents, on average, have more education and connection to higher-status networks, the difference between those who can choose and those who cannot is likely to further stratify schools on the basis of race. As a result of these dynamics, many schools that use unrestricted choice plans are segregated by race and socioeconomic status.…”

Reframing Public Educational Services and Programs as Tradable Commodities – A Synthesis and Critique of British Columbia’s Bill 34

“…However, we can draw from the experience of countries that have adopted similar policy options and legislation. Studies done in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States clearly show that educational policy options based on entrepreneurialism, choice, and competition promote a form of competition between school districts that allow only those with the most valued cultural capital to commodify it in the marketplace, leaving others with limited access to diminishing public and private resources (Delhi, 1996;Kenway & Epstein, 1996;Robertson, 2000;Wells, Lopez, Scott, & Holmes, 1999). A design that turns school districts over to market forces and gives parents more choice does little to alleviate social divisions and promote equity, heterogeneity, pluralism, and local needs (Wells, Lopez, Scott, & Holmes, 1999).…”

De Las Rocallosas a Los Andes: El Experimento De Escuelas Charter en El Contexto Político Argentino

“…Las escuelas autogestionadas de San Luis se inspiraron en el movimiento de las escuelas charter impulsado en Estados Unidos entre fines de la década de 1980 y principios de 1990, y que actualmente da cuenta de experiencias charter en 42 de los 50 estados federales (NCES, 2015;WELLS et al, 1999). El principio rector de estas escuelas ha sido la combinación de provisión privada y financiamiento estatal sobre la base de convenios o contratos (charters) suscriptos entre el Estado y distintos prestadores de variada naturaleza, cuya renovación está supeditada al cumplimiento de estándares de calidad definidos a priori.…”