The pervasiveness of neoliberalism, or market-based principles, in the past half century of educational reform have proliferated school choice initiatives, or “free market mechanisms designed to rid the educational system of waste and inefficiency and to empower consumers” (Wells, Slayton, & Scott, 2002, p. 340). However, these recent policy changes have done nothing but erode the public school system (Lubienski, 2006). Therefore, this paper questions “whether or not charter schools are efficacious public policy in a democratic system” (Heilig & Clark, 2018) by providing a broader commentary on school choice policies and their debilitating, marginalizing effect on neighborhood public schools. The empirical case found here within highlights the “practiced reality” (Diem & Young, 2015, p. 843) of school choice policies which are embedded within the global neoliberal macrosocial discursive structures of public schooling in the 21^st century (Ball, 2012).

Theoretical Perspective

This study is guided by the tenets of critical policy analysis (CPA) (Diem & Young, 2015). Critical policy scholars carefully describe the theoretical positioning that informs their perspectives and research methods (Ball, 1995; Diem & Young, 2015). Therefore, I utilize the leftist critique of neoliberalism to describe the historical nature of the macrosocial educational policy context in the United States. This critique is necessary to address the reproduction of “social stratification” (Diem & Young, 2015, p. 843) that occurs when school choice creates an economy of “winners and losers” (Diem & Young, 2015, p. 843). Moreover, this context is necessary in order to address how school choice policies have an othering effect on already marginalized, historically underperforming schools. Given the prevalence of school choice policies within the context of neoliberalism in public education, in this paper, I consider traditional, neighborhood public schools to be a “non-dominant group” (Diem & Young, 2015, p. 843). However, given the reality that historically underperforming schools who are most dangerously threatened by school choice initiatives are predominantly populated by students from minoritized populations, this distinction is also quite literal.

The No Child Left Behind Act, Race to The Top, and Every Student Succeeds Acts mandate accountability sanctions and Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) goals that rank teachers, principals, schools, students, and communities against each other, which promotes competition (McGuinn, 2016). These policies promote marketization and privatization, or school choice, by closing and stigmatizing poor performing schools, creating specialized schools, schools within schools, and charter schools (Hursh, 2016). Moreover, each of these reforms maintains accountability for performance of racial and ethnic subgroups, and as a result, has “normalized racial disparities” (Horsford, 2017, p. 137). This performance competition among students has “perpetuated a racialized narrative of academic ability—a natural racial order, if you will, in American education (Horsford, 2017, p. 141)”. As Wells, Slayton, & Scott argued nearly two decades ago, “today’s neoliberalism, grounded in the desire to afford individuals more freedom for their market-based initiatives, privileges those who have the economic, social, and political power to make the market work for them” (p. 343).

This study utilized critical ethnographic methods (Thomas, 1993). As a participant observer, data was collected over the course of the 2018-19 school year. Field notes documented these interactions in real time but were privately revised and elaborated on immediately following the period of observation at the field site. Data collection also included open-ended interviews with the principal and teachers. To gather more teacher perspectives, focus groups were conducted. All interviews and focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed by the researcher and uploaded to Atlas.ti for coding. The first, or initial round of coding used a series of open codes that relate to the specific ways that the work of educators in the school has been altered by the increase of charter school activity in the community (Saldaña, 2016). A second round of coding drew on themes from the initial coding process. Specifically, these themes were created with the understanding that neoliberal policies exploit individual autonomy by producing subjects who are pressured to compete in order to be perceived as effective (Ball, 2015). The field site was a public neighborhood elementary school located close to the urban core of a large city in Texas. The ethnic makeup of the school was 8.7% African American, 89% Hispanic, and 1.6% White in grades K-5. The percentage of students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch was 95.8%. Additionally, 27.2% of the students were English Language Learners and 6.8% qualified for special education services. The school had been through several changes in leadership over the years and was recently labeled “improvement required” (IR) by the state department of education for failure to meet Annual Yearly Progress goals as defined by high-stakes testing performance. At the beginning of data collection, the school had successfully moved out of IR status based on the previous year’s performance.

As charter schools descended upon the neighborhood in which the school was situated, students began leaving the school at alarming rates. Each year the school lost about 2-3 students per homeroom class at each grade level. Institutional discourses at the district level supported school choice initiatives within and outside the district. Specifically, the superintendent described himself as a promoter of school choice. He asked parents to promote the school’s recent academic performance to other parents within the community. This was an attempt to curb the declining enrollment that the school was experiencing as students withdrew to attend charter schools within the attendance boundary. As a result of this declining enrollment, the school had to let go of two teachers, which had severe consequences for staff morale. There was emotional unrest at a staff meeting when teachers were forced to say goodbye to a colleague within the first three weeks of the school year. Additionally, one of the themes that emerged from the data collection and analysis was ways that the school and principal were actively trying to market themselves to the community. For example, a banner appeared outside the school promoting their dual language program. Moreover, the principal was in talks with district leaders about becoming an internal district charter school with a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) focus. Throughout the year, the principal leveraged the recent performance results as both a way to market the school and keep the focus on continuous improvement to curb the declining enrollment. These findings contribute to the critical policy scholarship focused on the global neoliberal assault on public education.

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