Quantification and the homogeneous representation of urban students in school choice research and politics

ABSTRACT

In education, low-income and racially minoritized students in urban districts are often constructed as ‘dependent’ – weak in their social positions but deserving of educational opportunity. This social construction of ‘urban’ students has been central to school choice politics and policymaking in the United States. In this study, I interrogate one particular aspect of this social construction: the way low-income and racially minoritized students are represented in quantitative data. I use school choice in Detroit, Michigan as an illustrative case; I conduct a critical discourse analysis of exchanges between former United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and members of Congress about school choice, and the quantitative research referenced during those exchanges. The study demonstrates how dominant conceptions of ‘urban’ education in the United States influence the production of data and research on school choice, and in turn the role those quantifications play in school choice discourse.

KEYWORDS:

• Quantification
• urban education
• school choice
• critical discourse analysis

Acknowledgments

This study is based on research conducted for my dissertation, titled “School Choice, Socioeconomic Status, and Stratified Enrollment in Detroit.” Thank you to Sarah Lenhoff, Erica Edwards, Thomas Pedroni, and Christopher Lubienski for their support, advice, and feedback as I conducted and presented the results of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).