AI offer first-hand account of a key stage in the development of parental choice in American public schooling, when Massachusetts state officials, concerned not to repeat the trauma and disruption resulting from mandatory reassignment of students to achieve desegregation in Boston, persuaded and helped more than a dozen other cities to adopt plans…

Critical race theory (CRT) and the high-profile projects pushing the radical ideology's discriminatory ideas are trying to divide Americans by skin color and pit them against each other. The cultural fissures are manifesting in education, with heated arguments about curricula and classroom activism. This "Backgrounder" estimates how…

This research examines social justice leaders' community activism in response to three local and national political contexts. Grounded in literature that advances ecological models of school leadership, we analyzed how seven urban school leaders conceptualized community activism as linked to school outcomes, and how leaders conducted activism…

This review is focused on literature documenting the experiences of nondominant and minoritized parents who challenge injustice and inequity in the public schools attended by their children. It interrogates hegemonic approaches to parent involvement favoring dominant groups and silencing efforts of nondominant parents to confront discriminatory…

This article examines parent engagement in a Los Angeles portfolio district reform. Based on data from a 3-year study, we use the lens of democratic theory to examine the design and implementation of mechanisms seeking parent input in the selection of plans to operate low-performing and new schools. We find that despite significant efforts to move…

This commentary suggests that a countermovement for educational and social justice must learn from the dominant global neo-liberal movement and its successes in creating institutions and knowledge-making processes and networks. Local struggles for educational justice are important, but they need to be linked to a broader educational justice…

Public schools in some areas of the U.S. are as segregated as they were prior to court-ordered busing, in part due to school choice policies that appear to exacerbate extant segregation. In particular, Latina/o students are increasingly isolated in schools characterized as being in cycles of decline. Our case study of one such school is based on a…

In comparing one public school to another, discussions frequently include talk concerning the socio economics of a school or district, which then leads to talk about the advantages that one socioeconomic setting has over another. Educators tend to agree that low academic achievement frequently associated with a low socioeconomic status is a…

In the growing school choice research literature little, if any, attention has been given to the choices made by the providers of educational services. Yet the workplace preferences shown by teachers and school administrators influences educational practice in important ways and helps illuminate some of the important issues raised in the school…

This important book provides African American parents with the knowledge to diversify K-12 school choices beyond traditional neighborhood public schools in order to optimize the educational chances of their own children, and it will help educators and policymakers to close the black-white academic achievement gap throughout America. In November…

By examining various movements in education in "Flaunt It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice," Quinn and Meiners show a systematic and intentional "straightening" of American public schools. Throughout the book, the authors explore how various public and private realms operate to try to silence queer voices, and they discuss ways…

The authors attempt to tell the story of "Brown" and "Parents Involved" on educational inequality and connect these topics to economic competition globally. "Brown" came about in the 1950s in a much different environment: America was less diverse racially and ethnically, and economic competition on a global scale was…

This paper focuses on the long established diversity in the English education system--independent schools, grammar schools and religious schools--and in so doing explores tensions between education policy, politics and social justice. It explores the differential access to these different types of school, their social composition and implications…

Summarising the arguments of "How Not to Be A Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent" (Routledge Falmer 2003), the article discusses three questions. The first is whether parents who disapprove of elite private schools to such an extent that they would vote to ban them are acting hypocritically or inconsistently with…

This study compares segregation levels in Milwaukee public schools and in private schools participating in the Milwaukee voucher program. Using a segregation index that measures the difference between the percent of students in a school who are white and the percentage of school-age children in the greater metro area who are white, it finds that…