Could It Be Otherwise?: Parents and the Inequalities of Public School Choice

by Lois André-Bechely

Overview

Parents who wish to choose schools for their children must have more than a desire for different or better - they need detailed knowledge of the processes and practices that will give them access to schools of choice. This book vividly contrasts the experiences of a diverse group of urban parents choosing their children's schools with school choice policies from voluntary integration mandates to the No Child Left Behind Act. Lois André-Bechely carefully uncovers the race- and class-based inequities these policies sustain, documenting the way parents themselves become complicit in the historical inequalities of schooling. This book exposes how educational institutions are making this so and provokes new thinking about how public school choice could be implemented in more equitable and democratic ways.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415945219
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/23/2005
Series:	Critical Social Thought
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Lois Andre-Bechely is Assistant Professor, Educational Foundations, California State University, Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Series Editor's Introduction Introduction: Policy Studies from the Standpoint of Parents 1. Institutionalizing Public School Choice in an Urban District 2. Bureaucratic Structures, Privilege, and Discrimination: Parents Navigate the Application Process 3. Choice Work: Getting Access to Magnet Schools 4. Playing the Points Game: Unfair Advantage in School Choice 5. What We Know Otherwise: How Brown and NCLB Hit Home Appendices References

Editorial Reviews

"Throughout the book, we are shown how parent participants are socially, culturally, and historically positioned within systems of privilege and dominance, and how they bring to the forefront, where relevant, the particular intersections of race, class, and/or gender that position them through the choice process."

--Teachers College Record, October 25, 2007

 

The first chapter, "Institutionalizing public school choice in an urban district," contains an excellent and comprehensive historical overview of choice policies.

--Teachers College Record, October 25, 2007

From the Publisher