Fall 22

Book Review

School’s Choice: How Charter Schools Control Access and Shape Enrollment by Wagma Mommandi and KevinWelner. New York: Teachers College Press, 2021. 232 pp., US$36.95 (paper).

Jeremy Singer Wayne State University

Do charter schools segregate or stratify students? Do they systematically exclude certain groups of students? If so, how do they do this, and why does it matter? For as long as states have authorized charter schools, researchers, policy makers, and the public have debated these questions (Archbald 2000). School’s Choice, by Wagma Mommandi and Kevin Welner, aims to influence this debate and body of research. The book builds onWelner’s (2013) prior taxonomy of strategies that charter schools may use to shape their enrollment. Mommandi and Welner up- date the taxonomy and ground it in a theoretical perspective and normative stance on the centrality of access to charter schools and the practices they use to shape their enrollment.

School’s Choice does not present new empirical research. Rather, it is a collec- tion of purposely sampled expert perspectives, existing scholarly research, and analysis of news coverage. The book catalogs “exclusionary” practices that charter schools may use to shape enrollment (or in a few positive cases, “non- exclusionary” or “corrective” practices; 11), and some sense of their prevalence. It does not, however, systematically document the use of these practices by charter schools or the relative impact of each on enrollment.

Overall, School’s Choice provides a thorough accounting of the ways that charter schools can restrict access, and a helpful vocabulary to describe why charter schools may rely on exclusionary practices. It also includes a discussion of how restricted access to charter schools may perpetuate inequalities and undermine an egalitarian ideal many Americans believe schools should uphold, with rec- ommendations for those interested in changing course.

JEREMY SINGER is a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. He studies school choice and stratification, and more broadly the intersections of educational policy and racial and socioeconomic inequality.

For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected].

AUGUST 2022 677

Book Review

Although the book’s comprehensiveness is its strength, its generality is some- what limiting. Its broad discussion of access misses how the issue may differ for at least three distinct scenarios that concern the authors: (a) racial segregation and class stratification, (b) socioeconomic and ability stratification within low-income and racially segregated populations, and (c) the exclusion or marginalization of students with unique educational needs (e.g., students with disabilities, English- language learners, students who need substantial academic or behavioral supports). This limitation is best understood asmotivation for further scholarly work. It is still true, as Welner (2013) pointed out nearly a decade ago, that research on school choice and stratification slants toward the “demand side” (i.e., family prefer- ences, resources, and behavior) more than the “supply side” (i.e., school practices). School’s Choice usefully draws attention to the “supply side,” and its taxonomy offers a foundation for further research. In the introduction and second chapter, Mommandi andWelner describe their

motivation for the book and key concepts that frame their analysis of charter school practices. Their argument revolves around the concept of equitable access: “equal opportunity to attend a given school” based on “families know[ing] what charter school options exist” and “hav[ing] reasonable ability to enroll and attend if they want to, regardless of where the student lives, the student’s socioeconomic status, language abilities, special education needs, and so forth” (4). The authors assert that “virtually every major charter school issue is connected to the issue of access” (14). They elaborate on how restricted access to charter schools directly relates to their “publicness” and their impact on funding and finance, segregation and stratification, and measured academic outcomes. They also introduce the concepts of incentives, opportunity hoarding, and effectively maintained in- equality, which they use to explain why charter schools are incentivized to restrict access and how charter school practices and families’ choices interact to repro- duce educational inequalities. If the authors’ discussion of access feels disjointed at times, it is because the

issues at hand are salient in different ways for different stratification scenarios. The issue of segregation applies most directly to the scenario where charter schools maintain or exacerbate segregation by race or class, especially as charter schools have been proffered as a policy solution for racial and socioeconomic inequalities in lieu of remedying segregation (Scott andQuinn 2014). By contrast, the issues of funding and measured outcomes are most relevant to the scenario in which charter schools serving low-income and racially segregated communities enroll students with relative socioeconomic and academic advantages compared with their public school peers. Indeed, for funding and finance, the authors specifically mention the stratification of students by relative levels of poverty in districts “with a high concentration of residents living in poverty” (16); and for measured outcomes, they note problems of validity related to demographic matching. Welner’s (2013) original work raises similar concerns about “skimming [that]

678 American Journal of Education

Book Review

takes place within a disadvantaged community” (5). Finally, publicness has broad relevance to the democratic goals of education, but in relation to the “stratification critique” (Archbald 2000), it is perhaps most relevant for the exclusion or marginalization of students with unique educational needs, whose educational needs are more costly, and who typically score lower on standardized tests.

Organizing the book around the centrality of access certainly simplifies the authors’ argument, which is valuable for a nonacademic audience. Yet these different scenarios of stratification call for complexity in theorizing and nor- matively assessing charter schools’ exclusionary practices. For example, charter schools’ incentives to restrict access are contextually mediated—schools will act differently based on their leaders’ perception of competition and view of their school’s position in the educational market hierarchy ( Jabbar 2015). As an- other example, the role of opportunity hoarding in reproducing inequalities is especially relevant for racial segregation and class stratification, because op- portunity hoarding is usually seen as a between-group phenomenon. Yet, when charter schools stratify by relative levels of poverty or academic ability among low- income and racially minoritized students, other concepts—such as Bourdieu’s capital, habitus, and strategy (Carrasco et al. 2021)—may be more useful.

In the core of the book, Mommandi and Welner describe 13 ways charter schools can actively shape their enrollments. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 focus on strat- egies before the point of enrollment: charter schools’ strategic decisions about their missions or special foci, school location and transportation services, and uses of marketing and advertising. The next set of chapters (6 through 10) focus on the enrollment process: administrative burdens imposed on parents, encouragement or dissuasion based on children’s “match” (56) or “fit” (61), conditions on student enrollment, requirements for parental involvement, and a failure to provide ser- vices relevant for students with disabilities, emergent bilingual students, and low- income students. The third set of chapters focuses on charter school practices after students have enrolled: “counseling out” students based on “not meeting the standards” or being a “poor fit” (89), using grade retention, using “harsh discipline regimes” (106), avoiding “backfilling” students during the year (122), and im- posing financial “charges and expenses that go beyond the ordinary” (129). To- gether, the chapters represent a thorough collection of perspectives and prior research for each aspect of the authors’ taxonomy.

By speaking generally about the issue of access for charter schools, Mommandi and Welner miss an opportunity to explore the role that different exclusionary charter school practices likely play in different contexts. The exclusionary prac- tices that charter schools use, and their stratifying consequences, depend on the “landscape of choice” (Bowe et al. 1994, 75) in which they operate. School design and location play an outsized role in determining the most relevant stratification scenario for charter schools. Themission and target population of a school, as well as the degree of demographic diversity in the districts where they are located, will

AUGUST 2022 679

Book Review

dictate whether subsequent exclusionary practices function to maintain racial or socioeconomic segregation, skim relatively advantaged students among a gener- ally disadvantaged population, or exclude students with unique educational needs. The degree to which charter schools use exclusionary practices in these different stratifying scenarios would be an excellent place for further research. School design and location also deserve more complex normative consider-

ations. Most of the practices that Mommandi and Welner discuss are clearly exclusionary and antiegalitarian. One can say the same about school design and location and transportation decisions when they intentionally or functionally re- strict access to certainmembers of a school’s target population. Butwhat about the role of school design and location in determining a charter school’s target pop- ulation in the first place? Are there legitimate cases when charter schools can design themselves as “counterpublics” for specific cultural groups or locate themselves strategically to enroll students from those groups (Wilson 2016)? The authors do not ignore these questions entirely, but their concern about access broadly does not leave much space to interrogate them deeply. In their final three chapters, Mommandi and Welner discuss the implications

of their taxonomy, including recommendations for equitable access. The authors reintroduce the concepts of incentives, opportunity hoarding, and effectively maintained inequality to explain why charter schools want to control access and shape their enrollment. They point to some positive practices that may expand access: conducting “mystery shopper” audits, authorizing intentionally diverse charter schools, creating unified enrollment systems and common applications, facilitating district and charter school collaborations, reducing administrative barriers to enrollment, and providing transportation. Finally, they offer recom- mendations for changing the incentives for exclusionary practices and the rules that govern charter schools. Those recommendations include increasing funding for students with greater educational needs, adjusting or ending test-based ac- countability pressures, and stronger oversight over charter schools when au- thorized and established, during the enrollment process and while students are enrolled. The policies and practices that use state resources and authority sound most

promising. Based on the research on gentrification and school diversity (e.g., Posey-Maddox 2015), intentionally diverse charter schools could end up en- rolling a racially diverse but increasingly socioeconomically and academically advantaged population. Recent research also suggests that centralized enroll- ment systems may not facilitate greater integration (Monarrez and Chien 2021). Conducting “mystery shopper” audits, reducing administrative burdens for en- rollment, and especially providing transportation may have a more positive im- pact. Likewise, funding, accountability, and oversight are promising levers for the use of state power to regulate school and district behavior. Again, though, school leaders and policymakers need to be clear about what stratification scenarios they

680 American Journal of Education

Book Review

are seeking to mitigate. Addressing enrollment burdens and providing transpor- tation are likely to enhance access within a local educational market, which can often mean equalizing enrollment opportunities among demographically similar students rather than facilitating greater racial and socioeconomic integration. Reducing competitive pressures from test-based accountability would similarly change incentives relative to other schools in the local educational market. Im- proved funding and audits seem best suited to ensuring the inclusion of students with unique educational needs, though funding incentives might also support racial and socioeconomic integration. Finally, improved oversight would help address multiple scenarios of stratification, but the authors rightly emphasize that this will require stronger accountability for authorizers themselves, who will be responsible for carrying out much of this oversight.

As a final point, the issues of access and exclusionary practices raised in School’s Choice are also relevant to public schools and to other school choice policies. Mommandi andWelner state that they focus on charter schools because they have more autonomy to engage in “access-constraining behaviors” and greater in- centive to use them in response to competitive pressures (13). Yet, in districts where school choice policies are implemented, public schools also have incentive to use exclusionary practices (Jennings 2010). The authors also take a clear stand against school choice in general: “The more marketized our system, the more stratification we can expect” (8). Likewise, the National Education Policy Center, whichWelner directs, has not been shy in its critical stances toward school choice. A logical extension of the book is to study patterns of stratification among a combination of school choice policies and the exclusionary practices used by all schools inmarket-based school systems. This can help broaden one of the authors’ core questions, from whether charter schools are public or not to how school choice policies change the publicness of whole school systems (Bulkley et al. 2010). Considering whole school choice systems can help us imagine alternative approaches to school system reform; reform that allows for school autonomy and empowers parents and students while avoiding the stratifying consequences of market-based design and mitigating other sources of stratification. Mommandi and Welner’s taxonomy, which advances our thinking about how schools restrict access in marketized school systems, can certainly contribute to such a project.

References

Archbald,DouglasA. 2000. “SchoolChoice and School Stratification: Shortcomings of the Stratification Critique and Recommendations for Theory and Research.” Educational Policy 14 (2): 214–40.

Bowe, Richard, Sharon Gewirtz, and Stephen J. Ball. 1994. “Captured by the Discourse? Issues and Concerns in Researching ‘Parental Choice.’” British Journal of Sociology of Ed- ucation 15 (1): 63–78.

AUGUST 2022 681

Book Review

Bulkley, Katrina, Henry Levin, and Jeffery Henig, eds. 2010. Between Public and Private: Politics, Governance, and the New Portfolio Models for Urban School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Carrasco, Alejandro, Manuela Mendoza, and Carolina Flores. 2021. “Self-Segregation Strategies through School Choice inChile: AMiddle-Class Domain?” Journal of Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833211036505.

Jabbar, Huriya. 2015. “ ‘Every Kid Is Money’: Market-Like Competition and School Leader Strategies in New Orleans.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 37 (2): 638–59.

Jennings, Jennifer. 2010. “School Choice or Schools’ Choice? Managing in an Era of Accountability.” Sociology of Education 83 (3): 227–47.

Monarrez, Tomas, and Carina Chien. 2021. Dividing Lines: Racially Unequal School Boundaries in US Public School Systems. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

Posey-Maddox, Lynn. 2015. When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools: Class, Race, and the Challenge of Equity in Public Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Scott, Janelle, and Rand Quinn. 2014. “The Politics of Education in the Post-Brown Era: Race, Markets, and the Struggle for Equitable Schooling.” Educational Admin- istration Quarterly 50 (5): 749–63.

Welner, Kevin G. 2013. “The Dirty Dozen: How Charter Schools Influence Student Enrollment.” Teachers College Record, http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID p17104.

Wilson, Terri S. 2016. “Contesting the Public School: Reconsidering Charter Schools as Counterpublics.” American Educational Research Journal 53 (4): 919–52.

682 American Journal of Education