Charter schooling and social justice

Educational Theory

Volumn 51, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 151-170

  Abowitz, Kathleen Knight ^a  

^a MIAMI UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0012006836     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2001.00151.x     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Nancy Fraser, "Solidarity or Singularity? Richard Rorty Between Romanticism and Technocracy," Praxis International 8 (October 1988), 268. It should he noted that Fraser does not address education or schooling in her writings. I am interpreting her work here and extending its theoretical applications to educational theory and policy.
2. Nancy Fraser, [ustice Interrnptus: Critical Reflections on the "Postsocialist" Condition (New York Routledge. This book will he cited as [I in the text for all subsequent references. 1997),81
3. Fraser, "Solidarity or Singularity!" 269.
4. Fraser, "Gender Equity and the Welfare State: A PostindustrialThought Experiment,'' in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries ofthe Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 218.
5. See Joel Whitebook, "Reconciling the Irreconcilable! Utopianism after Habermas," Praxis International no. 1 (1988): 73-90.
6. Seyla Benhabib, "Toward a DeliberativeModel of Democratic Legitimacy," in Benhabib, Democracyand Difference, 69. Other theorists of deliberative democracy include Joshua Cohen, "Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy," in Benhabib, Democracy and Difference, 95-1 19
7. John Dryzek, Discursive Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
8. BenjaminBarber, Strong Democracy (Berkeley: University of CalifomiaPress, 1984)
9. JiirgenHabermas, A Theoryof CommunicativeAction,: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981) vol. 1
10. Jiirgen Habermas, A Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reasoning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984). vol. 2
11. See Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992) andIris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
12. Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989), 179.
13. Jean Cohen, "Discourse Ethics and Civil Society," Philosophy and Social Criticism 14, no. 3/4 1988): 316.
14. "Concluding Remarks," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992), 467.
15. Fraser here is a pragmatist, not an idealist. She would likely follow the thinking of Richard Rorty who, in commenting on Habermas's work, accuses him of attempting to provide yet another metanarrative as a solution to social problems. See Rorty, "Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodemity," in Habermas and Modernity, ed. Richard 1. Bernstein (Cambridge: MIT Press, where he calls "metanarratives, even metanarratives of emancipation. an unhelpful distraction from what Dewey calls, 'the meaning of the daily detail."' 1985): 175
16. Fraser discusses the mfference between a public and a community in "Rethinhng the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy," in Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere, 140, fn. 28.
17. Jurgen Habermas, "Further Reflections on the Public Sphere," trans. Thomas Burger, in Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere, 428.
18. Stacy Smith makes this point in her book, The Democratic Potential of Charter Schools [New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2001 J, chap. 2. Smith's text, which I was able to read before publication, has helped to deepen my understanding of deliberative democracy theory and its nuances.
19. In "Solidarity or Singularity," 265, Fraser states that Rorty oscillates between two views of abnormal dscourse, the first - and the one most aligned with Fraser's conception -is developed from the work of Thomas Kuhn. The second is a monological Conception, "in which abnormal discourse is the prerogative of the strong poet and the ironist theorist" and in which a strong public/private spherical split is implied.
20. Richard Brosio makes use of this aspect of Fraser's critical theory in ''Issues and Arguments Concerning Class, Gender, Race, and Other 'Identities,"' Educational Studies 31, 4 [Winter 2000): 393-406.
21. For current national data on charter schools, see Office of Educational Research and Improvement, The State of Charter Schools 2000: National Study of Charter Schools, Fourth-Year Report (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2000).
22. Amy Stuart Wells, Alejandra Lopez, Janclle Scott, and Jennifer Jellison Holme. "Charter Schools as Postmodem Paradox: Rethinking Social Stratification in an Age of Deregulated School Choice," Harvard Educational Review 69, (1999): 186-89. no. 2 For more on this idea of educational publics, see Kathleen Knight Ahowitz, "Civil Society as a Site for Building Educational Publics: Possibilities and Limitations," Educational Studies 31, no. 4 (Winter 2OOO), 385-88.
23. U.S. Department of Education, A Study of Charter Schools: First-year Report (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1997). Retrieved online, 24 April 2000.
24. Data from a 1998 U.S. Department of Education survey reports that "the median enrollment of all charter schools is about 132 students per school, whereas all public schools in the charter states have a median of about 486 students." See "Executive Summary," in The State of Charter Schools: Third-year Report (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1999). Retrieved online, 24 April 2000.
25. Joseph A. Hawkins, "ToUpend the Status Quo,"Educotion Week on the Web (5 April2000): 1. Retrieved online, 24 April 28. American Federation of Teachers, "Measuring Up: The AFT'S Criteria for Good Charter School Legislation." Retrieved online, 5 October 2000. At this useful website, the AFT gives each state's charter school law a rating based on these criteria 2000 i.http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory cfmisl~1g=3Ohawkins.hl9hkeywords=charter%2Oschools
26. Jeffrey R. Henig, "School Choice Outcomes," in School Choice and Social Controversy: Politics, Policy, and Law, ed. Stephen D. Sugarman and Frank R. Kemerer (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 19991, 86.
27. Here the term is put in quotation marks to refer to a broad array of attitudes, ideologies, curriculum, and educational arrangements that attempt to correct for historical or present patterns of domination, nonrecognition, or disrespect.
28. Sugarman, "School Choice and Public Funding," in Sugarman and Kemerer, School Choice and Social Controversy, 11 5.
29. Darcia Harris Bowman, "Charters Hit by Facilities Funding Woes," Education Week on the Web (8 November 2000). Retrieved online, 11 December 2000.
30. Amy Stuart Wells and UCLAResearch Associates, "Charter School Reform in California: Does it Meet Expectations?" Phi Delta Kuppnn 80, no. 4 (1998): 306.
31. U.S. Department of Education, A Study of Chmter Schools: First-year Report, chap. 3, p. 1, states that some charter school eligible for Title I funding may not be aware of eligibility procedures. For example, in Michigan, "75 percent of those reporting eligibility receive no funds." Additionally, in their study of California charter schools, Wells and her associates found that many schools need to tap into private funds to supplement budgets: "What makes this reliance on private fund raising particularly problematic is that ddferent charter schools have dramatically different access to such resources," "Charter School Reform in California, "3 10.
32. I borrow the procedurahst and consequentialist frames from Fraser's development of these ideas in "Talking about Needs: Interpretive Contests as Political Conflicts in Welfare-State Societies," Ethics 99 [January 1989), 312.
33. See Signithia Fordham, Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
34. "Charter schools weremore likely [in 1998-1999, using totalnumber of students as base for calculation] than all public schools to serve black students (almost 24 percent versus 17 percent) and Hispanic students (21 percent versus 18 percent)." See Office of Educational Research and Improvement, The State of Charter Schools 2000: National Study of Charter Schools, Fourth-Year Report, 2. For a summary of the debates concerning how these statistics are calculated and reported, see Lynn Schnailberg, "Research on Charters and Integration is Limited," Education Week on the Web (10 May 2000). Retrieved 11 December ~http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewsto~.cfm!slug=35choice.hs1l9 2000
35. "'Diversity' Law Threatens N.C. Charter Schools," National Center for Policy Analysis, Emtorial, "Closing Charters," Wall Street Tournal, 6 July 1998. Retrieved online, 26 September 2000
36. Office of Educational Research and Improvement, The State of Charter Schools, Third-year Report.
37. See Betsy Levin, "Race and School Choice," in Sugarman and Kemerer, School Choice and Social Controversy, 266-99.
38. Henig, "School Choice Outcomes," 79.
39. Rebecca Gordon, Libero Della Piana, and Terry Keleher, "Facing the Consequences: An Examination of Racial Discrimination in US. Public Schools," Applied Research Center: Erase Reports and Studies, 1 March 2000. Retrieved online, 26 October 2000.
40. For example, the way that some charter schools are funded can negatively impact the funding for poor districts. Cincinnati Public Schools willlose $21 million in state education funds in 2000-2001 to 12 charter schools operating in that district; see Andrea Tortora, "Charters will Cost CPS $21 Million," Cinciniiati Enquirer, 21 November 2000, Al. Poorer school districts are more affected by the impact of charter funding than arc wealthier districts. Yet as Sugarman states in his article, "School Choice and Public Funding," 124, that because charters draw pupils from across & strict lines, existing school funding arrangements will no longer make sense. As he reasons, "it will be hard to come up with any fair or coherent funding arrangement that will allow charter schools to thrive and that will also maintain the inequalities of the traditional school finance system. This is why a big expansion in charter schooling may eventually so undermine our old system of financing neighborhood public schools as to require the ending of those inequalities that have for so long been built into the structure of local, wealth-based, public school finance."
41. I thank my colleague Tom Poetter for helping me see this more clearly.
42. Joe Schneider, "Five Prevailing Charter Types," The School Administrator 56, no. 7 (1999): 30.
43. Leo Casey, "The Charter Conundrum," Rethinking Schools [Spring 2000): 19.
44. Kenneth R. Stevenson, "Privatization of Public Education: Panacea or Pandora's Box?" School Business Affairs 65, no. 11 (1999): 15.
45. Amy Stuart Wells and UCLA Research Associates, "Charter School Reform in California: Does it Meet Expectations?" 306.
46. Michael Walzer, "Rescuing Civil Society," Dissent 46, no. 1 (1999): 62-67.
47. Joshua Cohen, "Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy," in Benhabib, Democracy and Difference, 110.
48. See Darcia Harris Bowman, "Michigan Charter Schools Aren't Innovative, Report Says," Education Week on the Web (23 February 2000). Retrieved online, 24 April 2000.