‘The kind of things we’ve heard keep people in the district’: White racial exclusion and the evolution of school choice policies in Portland Public Schools

Abstract

This policy history traces the evolution of Portland Public Schools’ school choice programme from the early 1970s until 2010 and examines its impacts on the historically black Albina neighbourhood. The purpose of this research is to identify the ideologies and assumptions that led to the establishment of the initial school choice programme and continued to influence decision makers as the programme evolved into a more neoliberal marketplace of schools. The district originally embraced controlled choice as a means to manage integration so it would not significantly tip the racial balance in predominantly white schools. By opting to make integration voluntary for students in predominantly white schools, the board legitimised white parents’ preferences for racially exclusionary school settings. In Portland Public Schools, white racial exclusion laid the foundation that shaped the technologies of the school choice programme as it developed into a more neoliberal iteration.

The Effects of School Choice Competition on an Underserved Neighborhood Public School

“…Although he is believed to be doing the right things in the eyes of neoliberals, he is creating a system that exacerbates inequalities for members of his own racial identity with similar backgrounds. That is, the system he created rewards only those students and schools that conform to white standards of academic achievement (Serbulo, 2019). Consequently, the superintendent’s support for and participation in the school choice market increases racial segregation across the district (Frankenberg et al, 2017; Garcia, 2008; Heilig & Clark, 2018; Ni, 2012; Roda & Wells, 2013; Scott & Quinn, 2014; Siegel-Hawley et al, 2017), and also results in a residualization of lower performing Students of Color at the field site (Fitzgerald et al, 2018).…”

School and Residential Segregation in the Reproduction of Urban Segregation. A Case Study in Buenos Aires

“…On the one hand, the promotion of school choice policies tends to favour higher levels of school segregation (Rich et al, 2021;Saporito and Hanley, 2014;Serbulo, 2019), although the specific mechanism that produces this association varies according to the institutional context (Wilson and Bridge, 2019). In turn, 'educational mobilities' are a key factor in understanding how these school choices are made effective based on the spatial capital of families (Barthon and Monfroy, 2011;Bonal et al, 2021).…”

To move forward, we must look back: White supremacy at the base of urban studies

“…Lawrence (2013) opens a conversation on the privatisation of care and concern related to racial segregation and the privatisation of education. By the privatisation of care and concern, Lawrence (2013) states that public policymakers and individual parents concerned with equal access to educational opportunities for all children systematically self-segregate into areas where ‘educational standards’ are the highest or move to racially diverse neighbourhoods for the benefits of multiculturalism but choose to educate their children in primarily White private schools (Montalva Barba, 2021; Serbulo, 2019). It leads to an opportunistic self-segregation and turns their claim for diversity and inclusion into a financial benefit for their White children (Montalva Barba, 2021).…”