Could It Be Otherwise Parents and the Inequalities of Public School Choice [Hardcover]

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.

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

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