ABSTRACT
Purpose: Nearly all schools in the United States closed in spring 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyze traditional public and charter school reopenings for the 2020–21 school year in five urban districts. We provide a rich and theoretically grounded description of how and why educational leaders made reopening decisions in each of our case districts. Research Methods: We used data from a multiple-case study from March 2020 to July 2021. The research team conducted 56 interviews with school, district, and system-level leaders;triangulated with publicly available data;and also drew on interview data from a subsample of parents and guardians in each of our sites. We analyzed these data through qualitative coding and memo writing and conducted detailed single- and cross-case analyses. Findings: School system leaders in our case sites generally consulted public health authorities, accounted for state-level health and educational guidance, and engaged with and were responsive to the interests of different stakeholders. Districts' adherence to and strategic uses of public health guidance, as well as a combination of union-district relations and labor market dynamics, influenced reopening. Parents, city, and state lawmakers, and local institutional conditions also played a role, helping to explain differences across cases. Implications: In contrast to the "politics or science” framing that has dominated research and public discourse on school reopening, we show that local pandemic conditions and local political dynamics both mattered and in fact were interrelated. Our findings have some implications for how educational leaders might navigate future crises. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Educational Administration Quarterly is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
Issues of school choice regularly appear in popular discourse related to resources, equity, and freedom in education. Although school choice policies and initiatives promote a vision of additional schooling options for all students, the predominant target of choice advocates and researchers has been densely populated, urban cores in the United States (McShane & Smarick, 2018). However, this belies the fact that rural communities have also engaged in forms of school choice decision-making. While some research has explored rural school choice, we believe there are myriad, novel opportunities for meaningful education research regarding school choice, equity, and conceptions of rurality. Over nine million children in the United States, or nearly 20% of the public-school student population, attend a school designated as rural (Kena et al., 2015;Showalter et al., 2019). Additionally, rural schools and districts have remarkable levels of variability in terms of racial, ethnic, cultural, and geographic compositions. These contexts provide significant motivation for further explorations of rurality and school choice. This review is not intended to advocate for an expansion of school choice policies. Rather, we aim for it to serve as a call for additional research that seeks to better understand how school choice policies are currently operating in rural areas and their implications for educational equity. To advance toward a robust research agenda for rural education and school choice, we review the existing literature on school choice and rural education, provide key recommendations, and assert the need for additional consideration of the following: critical socio-political histories and theories;methodological diversity;issues of race, racism, sexual orientation, and equity;social-emotional learning and development;impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic;and broadened understandings of rurality.