Skip to main content

2004 - The Goals of a Voluntary Integration Program and the Problems of Access: A Closer Look at a Magnet School Application Brochure

Attribution: Andre-Bechely, Lois
Researchers: Lois Andre-Bechely
University Affiliation: California State University
Email: loisab@caistatela.edu
Research Question:
Analysis of the district's magnet school choice brochure and application and show that these key texts provide insights about Brown.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Equity and Excellence in Education
Journal Entry: Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 302-315
Year: 2004
Findings:
  • The analysis presented reveals institutional patterns of privileging and excluding, found in the production, distribution, and interpretation of a document intended to support the integration of students of different racial identities.
  • In the district’s efforts to let parents know what the voluntary integration program “was about,” to make sure the information they were providing parents “fit” into the brochure, and to get the application brochure into every parent’s hands, the district failed to understand how the choices they made reinforced privileges for those parents who can access and manage dominant textual practices.
  • This study shows how the bureaucratic organization and managerial decisions to support compliance with the court-ordered voluntary integration program created a new set of problems for realizing the program’s goals.
Keywords: Brown vs Board of EducationMagnet SchoolsResegregationVoluntary DesegregationRegions: N/AMethodologies: QualitativeResearch Designs: Secondary Survey DataAnalysis Methods: Qualitative Techniques Sampling Frame:Local
Sampling Types: NonrandomAnalysis Units: DocumentData Types: Qualitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • Institutional Ethnography–> seeing texts as active, institutional contexts –> How voluntary integration becomes implemented through the district, local schools and families?
  • Texts that parent’s receive (magnet school brochures) that is particularly relevant when trying to understand parents experiences with policy implementation and their participation in the historically inequitable outcomes of public school choice.
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts
Skip to toolbar