Accountability Battle: A Critical Analysis of a Charter Renewal Decision.

Charter school policy represents two simultaneous forms of accountability, in which schools are accountable to both parents and authorizers. This study of a K-8 charter renewal decision interrogates these accountability relationships and the role of race and power in privileging the interests of particular stakeholders over others. Using counternarrative methodology and qualitative interviews and observations, we draw on critical race theory and new managerialism to make sense of the competing accounts surrounding a non-renewal process. We find four areas of tension, in which district officials subscribe to new managerialist authorizing styles that leave little room for participation from the Black and low-income school community. We conclude with recommendations for how districts can partner with communities to work toward frameworks of accountability that value the goals of multiple stakeholder groups.

Social Construction Is Racial Construction: Examining the Target Populations in School-Choice Policies.

Purpose: We examine policy influencers' perceptions of the targets of school-choice policy across five states, exploring how constructions varied for White and racially minoritized families, whether policy actors conceived of the "target" of policy as the child or the parent, and how these racialized constructions varied across different types of school-choice policies. Research Methods/Approach: We conducted 56 semistructured interviews in 2019 with state-level stakeholders across five states. Findings: We found that policy actors generally viewed White families as strong and racially minoritized families as weak. However, for both groups, we found variation in whether these constructions were positive or negative and differences between students and parents. We find that social constructions are fluid, with varying, sometimes conflicting and contradictory views of racially minoritized and White parents in the same period, within the same state context. Despite the salience of race throughout social constructions of the target population, policy actors primarily used color-evasive references. In general, we found little variation in policy components at the state level. Implications: Our work demonstrates how racialized social constructions matter for equity in school-choice policy, with implications for local, state, and federal policy and for future research.