School Choice and Educational Equity
Two primary concerns structure my work on education. First, an interest in how free-market principles in education (i.e. the expansion of charter schools) influences racial and class-based equity. Second, the consequences of school discipline by race.
The first project focuses on various issues of equity in New Orleans all-charter school system—from corporate seat reservations to parent navigation of the charter school system. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans became the first all-charter school system in the United States. Among the many changes to the school system—was the untethering of children to neighborhood schools. Neighborhood would play a limited role in where students went to school. Instead, parents and caregivers would complete applications for admittance to schools across New Orleans. Housing scholars and education scholars have identified residential segregation as a major driver in school segregation. The shift in New Orleans schools could, therefore, represent an avenue by which New Orleans schools could become more integrated and equitable.
As the only all-charter school system in the country, many scholars have examined various aspects of the New Orleans educational system—from the transition to charter schools following Hurricane Katrina (Buras, 2014; Lay 2022), to the exclusion of Black-led charters (Henry, 2021), to community resistance (Buras, 2014). I examine how caregivers navigate the all-charter school school system in New Orleans and how parent and caregiver’s strategies interact with charter schools policies.
In addition to this work, my work in education and discipline extends much of the theory building generated in my work on race and criminal justice. Here, colleagues, Ben Fisher (University of Wisconsin), Stephanie Wiley (University of Oregon), and I examine the disparate consequences of school suspensions by race. In a co-authored paper, published at Race and Social Problems, we find that students with a suspension by the 9th grade are more likely to experience suspensions in later grades. However, this finding is exacerbated for Black students who experience higher frequencies of suspensions in later grades after an early suspension.