Forced to Choose: School Choice and the Spatial Production of Youth Identities in a Post-Industrial Age

Abstract

In this educational ethnography, I focused on how parents and students enrolled in a public charter high school in Sundale City (pseudonym), Arizona made the choice to attend a charter school. I also focused on educational reforms in the context of two large district high schools to further contextualize family choice-making. In contrast to the prevailing view that it is primarily parents with the requisite cultural and social capital who access school choice, participants in this study were `forced' to choose an alternative to their neighborhood district school due to the harmful effects of being marginalized and penalized in traditional district school contexts. With implications for policy and practice, this anthropological study expands the polemic surrounding school choice by considering the discursive practices inscribed in traditional school contexts that force out disenfranchised students. Understanding of family choice-making and students' experiences contributes to theorizing social inequality and educational reform in new ways that lead to the development of equitable school spaces.