Mother tongues: the Opt Out movement’s vocal response to patriarchal, neoliberal education reform

Schroeder, Stephanie; Currin, Elizabeth; McCardle, Todd

doi:10.1080/09540253.2016.1270422

Cited by 19 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Initially, we wondered what led individuals to the opt-out movement and elicited the OOFN's specific aims and broader vision for public education (McCardle et al, 2018;Schroeder et al, 2018Schroeder et al, , 2020b. From there, spurred by Facebook interactions during the contentious 2016 election cycle to revisit our findings, we contacted our original 25 interviewees, five of whom participated in 1-on-1 follow-up phone interviews.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The OOMN, which narrowly conceives of the movement as dedicated to parents' own children's success and devoid of concern for the larger community, saddles members with a highly individualistic take on schooling, ironically ignoring their vocal antipathy for neoliberal education reform (Schroeder et al, 2018). Neoliberal conceptions of citizenship position education as a means of attaining individual success, couched in the larger purpose of preserving the nation's global standing through standardized test performance.…”

Section: Citizenship As Shared Fatementioning

confidence: 99%

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Portraits of Protest in Florida: How Opt-Out Makes the Personal Political

Currin

Schroeder

McCardle

2021

Teachers College Record

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Background/Context Opting out of high-stakes standardized tests, a phenomenon so widespread in the United States as to be regarded as a movement, is nevertheless a misunderstood and often maligned force in educational politics. Purpose This article offers a counternarrative of opt-out activism—a more thorough and vivid account of what we view as an unfairly maligned movement with tremendous potential for improving and preserving our nation's schools. Participants In-depth portraits introduce three members of the Opt Out Florida Network: Cindy Hamilton, an unabashed leader whose children have graduated; Sandy Stenoff, her partner in protest whose children remain in the system; and Susan Bowles, who grapples with conflicting roles of pedagogue and protester. Research Design As a critical ethnography, this study uses a qualitative approach to expose and challenge the unjust treatment of the opt-out movement, guided by the following research questions: 1) How do opt-out activists understand and explain their journeys to activism? 2) What experiences, concerns, and commitments guide them in their daily fight against high-stakes standardized testing? Data Collection and Analysis Using transcript data from focus group and 1-on-1 follow-up phone interviews, the research team composed and analyzed narrative portraits, which offer models of resistance to neoliberal education reform. Conclusions Contrary to their portrayal as passive, anti-test, anti-accountability parents solely focused on their own children, the opt-out movement is an active community of highly informed individuals dedicated to effecting positive change in education. The nuance of narrative captures the messy realities of activism, illustrating how parents and teachers must work together, guided by a view of citizenship as shared fate, to fight for more equitable and educative schools.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Citizenship As Shared Fatementioning

confidence: 99%

Portraits of Protest in Florida: How Opt-Out Makes the Personal Political

Currin

Schroeder

McCardle

2021

Teachers College Record

Self Cite

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“…The six articles related to parenting and schools included one Israeli studies and one American study of how parents used social media as a leveraging tool for protest (Avigur-Eshel & Berkovich, 2018;Schroeder et al, 2018). Three others looked at social media as a tool for facilitating parent-school communications or parent communications about schools (Addi-Raccah & Yemini, 2018;Fan & Yost, 2018;Vigo-Arrazola & Dieste-Gracia, 2018).…”

Section: School-related Parenting Usesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media and Parenting Support: A Systematic Scoping Review (2010-2019)

2021

IJWI

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“…In a study of the Colorado opt-out movement, researchers used school-level data to demonstrate that widespread participation in opt-out was most prevalent in suburban and rural areas and in higher SES communities with high performing schools (Clayton, Bingham & Ecks, 2019). Additionally, scholars have looked at the role of women in the movement (Schroeder, Currin & McCardle, 2018).…”

Section: The Opt-out Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

From policy networks to policy preferences: Organizational networks in the opt-out movement

Saraisky

Pizmony-Levy

2020

EPAA

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Organizational networks shape education policy by influencing power holders and elites, but do they have similar effects on grassroots activists? We use data from the National Survey on Opting Out (2016 and 2018; n = 2,909) to examine the role of organizational networks in mobilizing activists in the opt-out movement (a movement in which parents and caregivers refuse to have their children sit for standardized tests). Despite characterizations of the opt-out movement as a bunch of “soccer moms” disappointed with their children’s test scores, our findings show that opt-out is in fact a structured movement reliant on social movement organizations (SMOs) with agendas that go beyond standardized tests. Further, we demonstrate a small but significant correlation between contact with SMOs and individual policy preferences. These patterns suggest that organizational networks may inform education policy by creating a social space for activists to learn about different policy ideas in education. We discuss implications for research and practice.

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Mother tongues: the Opt Out movement’s vocal response to patriarchal, neoliberal education reform

Cited by 19 publications

References 37 publications

Portraits of Protest in Florida: How Opt-Out Makes the Personal Political

Portraits of Protest in Florida: How Opt-Out Makes the Personal Political

Social Media and Parenting Support: A Systematic Scoping Review (2010-2019)

From policy networks to policy preferences: Organizational networks in the opt-out movement

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