In this introduction, we outline the scholarly context and research questions that motivate this special issue: In what ways do racialized constructions of school quality open up or foreclose educational opportunity? How do understandings of school quality differ across local social, political, and demographic contexts? And lastly, at what points and in what ways is the school choice process itself racialized? We then introduce the five papers in this issue, each of which challenges us to think critically about taken-for-granted notions of school quality by interrogating factors that influence “choice” beyond the usual paradigm of test scores and parental decision-making.
BaderM. D. M.LareauA.EvansS. A. (2019). Talk on the playground: The neighborhood context of school choice. City and Community, 18(2), 483–508.
2.
BurasK. L.AppleM. W. (2005). School choice, neoliberal promises, and unpromising evidence. Educational Policy, 19(3), 550–564.
3.
ButlerA. (2021). What’s best for my child, What’s best for the city: Values and tensions in parent gentrifiers’ middle and high school selection processes. The Urban Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-021-00614-1
4.
CampiA. (2018). The unstable alliance for school choice: Social Movements and American neoliberalism. Polity, 50(3), 398–427.
5.
ChubbJ. E.MoeT. M. (2011). Politics, markets, and America’s schools. Brookings Institution Press.
6.
DumasM. J.DixsonA. D.MayorgaE. (2016). Educational policy and the cultural politics of race: Introduction to the special issue. Educational Policy, 30(1), 3–12.
7.
EvansS. A. (2021). “I wanted diversity, but not so much”: Middle-class white parents, school choice, and the persistence of anti-black stereotypes (p. 00420859211031952). Urban Education.
8.
EwingE. L. (2018). Ghosts in the schoolyard: Racism and school closings on Chicago’s South Side. University of Chicago Press.
9.
FreidusA. (2019). “‘A Great School Benefits Us All’: Advantaged parents and the gentrification of an urban public school. Urban Education, 54(8), 1121–1148. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085916636656
10.
GordonH. . (2021). This is our school! Race and community resistance to school reform. NYU Press.
11.
hooksb. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
12.
JabbarH. (2018). Recruiting “talent”: School choice and teacher hiring in New Orleans. Educational Administration Quarterly, 54(1), 115–151.
13.
JenningsJ. L. (2010). School choice or schools’ choice? Managing in an era of accountability. Sociology of Education, 83(3), 227–247.
14.
LabareeD. F. (1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 39–81.
15.
Ladson-BillingsG. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in US schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–12.
16.
LareauA.GoyetteK. (2014). Choosing homes, choosing schools. Russell SAGE Foundation.
17.
LipmanP. (2013). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. Routledge.
18.
NogueraP. A.SyeedE. (2020). City schools and the American dream 2: The enduring promise of public education. Teachers College Press.
19.
PattilloM. (2015). Everyday politics of school choice in the Black community. Du Bois Review Social Science Research on Race, 12(1), 41–71.
20.
Posey-MaddoxL.de RoystonM. M.HolmanA. R.RallR. M.JohnsonR. A. (2021). No choice is the “Right” Choice: Black Parents’ Educational Decision-Making in Their Search for a “Good” School. Harvard Educational Review, 91(1), 38–61.
21.
ScottJ. T. (2013). A Rosa parks moment? School choice and the marketization of civil rights. Critical Studies in Education, 54(1), 5–18.
22.
ScottJ. T.QuinnR. (2014). The politics of education in the post-Brown era: Race, markets, and the struggle for equitable schooling. Educational Administration Quarterly, 50(5), 749–763.
