AJE Feature | Social Construction Is Racial Construction: Examining the Target Populations in School-Choice Policies by Huriya Jabbar, Eupha Jeanne Daramola, Julie A. Marsh, Taylor Enoch-Stevens, Jacob Alonso, and Taylor N. Allbright.

The full-length American Journal of Education article by Jabbar et al. can be accessed here.

Advocates argue that school choice gives racially minoritized families access to better schooling options. But empirical research suggests that school choice policies can reproduce or even widen racial inequalities in access to high-quality schools (Blatt & Votruba-Drzal, 2021; Frankenberg et al., 2011; Lenhoff, 2020; Pattillo, 2015; Scott & Holme, 2016). When, and under what conditions, does choice reproduce racial inequities? We argue that how school-choice policies are designed, and by whom, influences student outcomes (Levin, 2012; Verger et al., 2020), and, in particular, whether choice reproduces or exacerbates structural inequities in access to high-quality schools (Jabbar, 2016).

In the recently published AJE article, “Social Construction Is Racial Construction: Examining the Target Populations in School-Choice Policies,” we explore how policy influencers (e.g., elite actors, advocates, policymakers, and leaders) describe the targets of school-choice policies and how their conceptions are shaped by race. Prior research suggests that social constructions of the target population–cultural characterizations or popular conceptions of a particular group–play an important role in shaping policy design and implementation (Schneider & Ingram, 1993), allocating greater benefits to some groups and sanctions to others. Moreover, social constructions can be implicitly racist (Fording et al., 2011; Soss et al., 2008), with profound impacts for racially minoritized communities (Katz, 1989; Keiser et al., 2004; Quadagno, 1994), yet these racialized constructions have been understudied in education arenas. 

Our study explores how social constructions of the targets of school choice policy are racialized across five states (Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and Michigan), selected for their variation in types of choice policies (charter schools, vouchers, intra- and inter-district choice). Our data come from 56 semi-structured interviews (Patton, 1990) in 2019 with state-level stakeholders. Interviewees were purposefully selected based on their key statewide leadership and included policy actors from state legislatures, advocacy groups, lobbying groups, unions, and professional associations. Applying Schneider and Ingram’s (1993) typology of target populations– which are viewed as either “weak” or “strong” and either “positive” or “negative,” we found variations in constructions along racial lines (See figure 1. Here, the shading in the cells indicates the strength of evidence for each cell, based on the prevalence of that type of construction in the interview data, aggregated across sites.). 

Figure 1

Overall Social Constructions

We find that policy influencers most often viewed White parents as “advantaged” (i.e., strong and positive) and deserving of the ability to choose schools because it was assumed they would make the best choices for their children and drive innovation in schools. There was one exception. In the case of Florida, White parents were constructed as “dependent” (i.e., weak and positive) and in need of vouchers to navigate an unfair and inequitable school choice system.

Sometimes, participants suggested that White parents hoarded opportunities for their children while not considering the consequences of their actions. Here policy influencers constructed White parents as “contenders” (i.e., strong and negative). However, even when policy actors described White parents critically, they assumed that White parents were simply doing the best for their children, with “unintended consequences” for racially minoritized groups or for society as a whole. Overall, White parents were seen as a powerful and the primary target of school choice policy.

White children were rarely mentioned as targets of school choice policy. While policy influencers suggested that White students were viewed as powerful and as having greater access to the most selective schools, the agency was ascribed to their parents. Indeed, policy influencers viewed White children as the status quo in a system that was geared to serve them. 

In contrast to White parents, racially minoritized parents were viewed by policy actors as weak, sometimes positively, as dependents, and sometimes negatively, as “deviants” (i.e., weak and negative). When constructing racially minoritized parents as dependents, participants suggested that racially minoritized parents needed school choice policies to become powerful. However, few participants tied racially minoritized parents’ relative lack of power to structural racism or class inequality. Instead, racially minoritized parents were characterized as uninvolved or incapable of pursuing the best opportunities for their children without the empowerment from choice systems. Further, in some instances, Black parents were constructed as deviants and barriers to their children’s success, who refused help from choice advocates. 

Participants overwhelmingly used color-evasive language, even in districts that were composed almost entirely of students of color. Instead, they used coded language like “zip codes,” “underserved,” or described how they wanted to “ensure a high-quality education option for every student regardless of where they live.” Coded language or not, racially minoritized students were largely viewed as dependents who needed saving from their “neighborhoods” or a “culture of poverty” in which they were embedded. Racially minoritized students were largely viewed as dependents—always as weak and usually positively. But, like their parents, they were also sometimes viewed negatively, as deviants.

Our study also begins to explore the extent to which these social constructions shape the design of policy levers meant to increase equitable access to school choice. In general, we found little variation in policy components across our study states, particularly for the three policy levers we theorized to increase equity and access in the system. These were: information about schooling options, transportation to access schools of choice, and enrollment policies ensuring transparent  fair processes, such as lotteries. When it came to private-school voucher policies in Louisiana and Florida, however, we found some potential linkages between variation in policy design and social constructions. In Louisiana, White parents were viewed as contenders (strong and negative), whereas in Florida, White parents were viewed as dependents (weak and positive)–as victims of a choice policy that was “originally intended for very low-income students.” In both states, vouchers were means-tested in terms of enrollment—families had to meet some criteria to be eligible. But in Florida, these criteria had recently expanded to allow, according to a policy influencer, “almost anybody” to participate, including many White middle-class families who had previously been ineligible for the program. In Florida, where White families were seen as dependent and in need of more school options, opening up choice policies to this group was a logical next step in their policy redesign. In contrast, in Louisiana, where White families were viewed negatively, not only were requirements determining who was eligible for a school voucher more stringent, but also in private schools that had more voucher applicants than seats, a lottery was required. No lotteries were required in Florida, which meant that schools could control their admissions processes and potentially admit more privileged families.

The lottery requirement in Louisiana could be viewed as a mechanism for restricting the power of White, middle-class families in securing access to private schools of their choosing, perhaps moving toward a fairer system of enrollment in voucher programs. And that is how several policy influencers described it. However, without more policy mechanisms to enhance access to schools through things like subsidized transportation and accessible information, which are often lacking, these commitments may be more symbolic than actual. In several cases, we saw a lot of rhetoric around expanding choices but with few policies in place to increase access for marginalized groups.  

Overall, our analysis indicates that while actors often perceive policymaking to be “rational” or “neutral,” school choice policy in these five states was shaped by racialized and contradictory views of parents and students. More often than not, the perceptions of racially minoritized communities were steeped in deficit thinking. 

And, despite the salience of race throughout social constructions of the target population, policy actors used color-evasive language rather than discuss race explicitly (Annamma et al., 2017; Bonilla-Silva, 2006). Policy influencers’ avoidance of race, while simultaneously evoking it in speech and policy design, raises questions about the ability of school choice policies to address racial inequities. Further, policy influencers avoided historical or systemic explanations of inequality, instead relying on deficit characterizations of individuals and communities.

We argue that, without a structural analysis of racism, policy actors can hold contradictory views of racially minoritized families. When policy actors adopted a culture-of-poverty-influenced argument, they conceived of parents as the agents of change but also as the reason choice was needed in those communities in the first place. These contradictory constructions reveal tensions within the framing of choice policy as ‘empowering’ parents to act in the best interests of their children. This relates to other research on racialized policy formation, which has shown how policy advocates draw on seemingly contradictory views of Black families in particular (D. Scott, 1997)–both pity and contempt–which are, in fact, linked, because the ideas that drive White liberals to help racially minoritized groups may be rooted in White supremacist ideas.

These contradictory views may allow choice policies to claim to serve those viewed as “deserving” of policy intervention while simultaneously limiting their access to benefit already privileged families. 

In summary, we argue that it is important to attend to how targets of policy are constructed in racialized ways, as these can become embedded into policy designs and have important implications for policy outcomes. 

References 

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Verger, A., Moschetti, M. C., & Fontdevila, C. (2020). How and why policy design matters: Understanding the diverging effects of public-private partnerships in education. Comparative Education, 56(2), 278–303.