Scott, Janelle T. (Ed.) (2005). School Choice and Diversity: What the Evidence Says. Reviewed by Anthony H. Normore, Florida International University

Scott, Janelle T. (Ed.) (2005). School Choice and Diversity: What the Evidence Says. NY: Teachers College Press. Pp. 192 $40.00     ISBN 0-8077-4599-5 Reviewed by Anthony H. Normore Florida International University December 10, 2006 More than 50 years after the landmark ruling of Brown versus Board of Education whereby the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court took scientific research into account in issuing the ruling of desegregation of schools in the United States, negative social attitudes and the status of ethnic and racial groups have been challenged and undergone change. Among the challenges, parents and school communities continue to find themselves engaged in the thrusts of negotiating school choice options against a complicated history of racial and social class exclusion in cities, suburbs, and rural areas where vestiges of racial and class segregation are still a reality. Even as constituents of education seek to increase choices and form more-diverse schools, one can argue that there remains space in the public sphere for school communities shaped around a particular pedagogical interest, educational concern or cultural frame. Marginalized populations, those left most vulnerable by public and private institutions, have found respite in some of the choice options afforded them. However, unlike most American families who can choose where their children will attend school, for most poor and minority families in inner cities and rural areas, school choices are limited despite their desire for a good education for their children. Social, legal and political contexts of school choice determine what effect choice plans can have on student diversity. This is the fundamental message in Janelle T. Scott’s book, School Choice and Diversity: What the Evidence Says. Scott presents an immensely valuable work that captures the many dimensions of the issues and controversies about choice processes and their consequences for student diversity. As a result of an orchestration of scholars at a conference sponsored by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education (NCSPE) at Teachers College, Columbia University, Scott collected and edited a series of papers on the issues of diversity and school choice that contributed to this edited volume. The format of the book is researcher/practitioner-friendly. It is clear and easy to follow and provides an excellent source of new knowledge for all stakeholders in education who are interested in school choice and diversity. Essentially, the contributors “engage and tease out” the complexities of school choice options (p. 6) by examining the relationship between educational policies and the effect such choice policies have on student diversity. Scott brings together a collection of empirical and theoretical research to consider the question: Under which contexts and conditions does school choice increase or decrease student diversity? (p. 7). In addition to the introduction and conclusion – both written by Scott, this book has seven chapters divided into two separate sections. In the first section the contributors examine the elements used by parents when making choices about schools or residential location. In chapter one, Lankford and Wyckoff examine data from the 1990 Census of Population and Housing to explore the relationship between the choice of public and private schooling. Furthermore, these authors use school characteristics such as race or educational inputs. According to Lankford and Wyckoff, “white families have strong preferences to avoid minorities and socioeconomic attributes correlated with minorities” (p. 25). They further assert that if improved racial integration is a social goal of enhanced choice, “then breaking the connection between a place of residence and place of schooling offers poor minority families access to better quality schools” (p. 24). In chapter two, Greene proposes a framework for conceptualizing and measuring integration. In efforts to capture important nuances as to why parents may choose private schools, Greene provides evidence that suggests freely chosen private schools are more likely to be integrated than are public schools. He reiterates that this advantage of private schools in integration “is probably caused by the act that the private schools do not determine their student composition based on racially segregated housing patterns and by the fact that parents appear to trust that private schools will manage integration better” (p. 39). Greene suggest that in order to promote integration, policymakers should imitate “the first rule of doctors: Do no harm. . .that assigning students to schools based on where they live, attempting to force them to attend different schools that are integrated, and regulating their choices have done plenty of harm already” (p. 41). In chapter three, Yun and Reardon examine diversity within private schools with focus on enrollments and segregation. They speculate that expanded school choice is unlikely to diversify private schools. The authors calculate exposure indexes for Asian, Black, Latino, Native American and white students to illustrate how exposure differs by race, region, and sector. Their findings revealed that the profile of private school segregation can be extremely different depending on the specific metropolitan area. In their efforts to determine whether or not private schools show similar patterns of segregation to those of the public schools, they reported that “White students are the most segregated in all sectors and across central city and suburban lines, and that for Black students, white students are distributed much more poorly in the private than in the public sector” (p. 56). In the second section of the book, the contributors turn to specific school choice plans in efforts to present findings on what happens to student diversity when these plans are implemented. In chapter four, Stuart-Wells and Crain examine a myriad of school choice and controlled choice school integration plans with focus on the point where school desegregation and school choice policies collide. These authors investigate the political context of voluntary desegregation programs (i.e., majority-to-minority transfer plans) which have shaped the way in which they have been portrayed – first, as the very necessary alternative to mandatory assignment plans and, deregulation. This is followed by a synopsis of what these programs have accomplished, how it was accomplished, and whose interests were served. The authors conclude that these plans present attempts to balance parental choice with the public goals of integration and equity. Furthermore, the authors reiterate that “the voluntary transfer programs leave large numbers of students and educators behind in segregated urban schools that may be worse of as a result” and that “this will only be exacerbated in new school choice policies that are more deregulated and are designed to address racial segregation and inequality only as an unintended consequence of good market-based reform” (p. 76). Chapter five discusses equity in charter schools. Asher and Wamba present three standards of equity as these standards relate to charter schools and discuss the challenges that charter schools pose to the traditional standards of equity. Based on a review of research on charter schools and their own research in urban charter schools these authors posit that the charter movement “will have achieved educational equity when there are no differences in achievement between urban and non-urban charter schools and when the race/ethnicity and the social class of the students served show no ability to predict achievement outcomes” (p. 92). Essentially, the focus here is on student outcomes. In chapter six, Welner and Howe examine the practice engaged in by some charter schools of steering away special education students at the pre-enrollment or counseling out these students during enrollment phase. These authors investigate how choice schools have responded to market forces by “favoring traditionally-abled students over special needs students, the most severe of whom are students of color” (p. 94). Practices of this nature promote separation and discourage inclusion. These authors maintain that the “exclusion of students who might reduce choice schools’ performance is the predictable – if not inevitable – result of dispensing with public deliberation in favor of market solutions” (p. 111). In chapter seven, Datnow, Hubbard and Woody examine single-gender magnet schools that offered distinct curricular foci. These authors describe the California Single-Gender Academies (SGA) and argue that it was a movement “primarily aimed at increasing school choice and addressing the underachievement of low-income students and students of color in separate academies of their own” (p. 115). In this chapter, reasons why students choose to attend these academies and the consequences for equity are discussed. Their research findings indicated that the schools attracted the racial and ethnic student populations they did because of targeted educational programs they offered. In chapter eight, Arlin-Mickelson provides a case study analysis of the re-segregation of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system (CMS) once a school choice plan replaced the district’s desegregation plan. The author asks the question: Are choice, diversity, equity, and excellence possible? CMS rests on its legacy as the first district “to use mandatory cross-town busing, to express racial goals for student assignments to schools, to set forth faculty and staff ratios at each school, and to pair schools in racially distinct neighborhoods as remedies to segregation” (p. 132). In response to the research question originally posed, Arlin-Mickelson found that given the dynamics of residential segregation, “its race neutral neighborhood-school-based choice plan cannot produce diverse schools. . .that the funding of equity policies rests on the slender reeds of partisan politics and tenuous public commitment to equity in education…” (p. 143). The author offers implications for policymakers that relate to “instructive findings” based on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg case for it reports choices district-wide effects on diversity, educational equity, and academic excellence, not just the effects on a subset of a district’s students. In the final section of the book, Janelle T. Scott concludes with an overview of the central theme that connects all the contributions made by the various scholars. In her analysis, Scott asserts that school choice has the potential to create more diverse schools even as it can also segregate and stratify them and that “if we indeed desire both choice and student diversity, we would be wise to consider the range of choice options likely to produce schools that are racially and economically diverse and are open to students of different ability levels” (p. 145). In reading this book it is imperative to bear in mind that as with many political values, choice and diversity are often in conflict. As asserted by Scott in her introduction, “perhaps nowhere is this conflict more pronounced than around the issue of school choice, where positions in support of and against choice can be deeply entrenched” (p.1). This book, School Choice and Diversity: What the Evidence Says is very timely and well-written for particular audiences. The book is a highly valuable, insightful and recommended volume, presented with rigor and thought. It is especially recommended by this reviewer to policymakers and public officials who are interested in further understanding parental choice and protecting equal access to public schooling and who wish to design better choice options. School leaders, teachers, parents, district administrators and educational consultants can benefit from a book of this nature as well. It is not uncommon for parents and teachers to question the policies and practices of state, school, and district office administrators. This book could serve as their guide for a better understanding of the choice processes of parents, and how political, social, and economic contexts shape such choices, can help officials design plans to encourage greater diversity or to preserve the diversity that already exists. About the Reviewer Anthony H. Normore, Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, College of Education, Florida International University, Miami, Florida Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.