Selective Enrollment, Race, and Shifting the Geography of Educational Opportunity

Abstract

We have increasingly witnessed a movement toward neoliberalism, an ideological and economic system that promotes aggressiveness in the public environment and shifts the attention of states from addressing the needs of their citizens to exhorting citizens to address their own needs. Beyond deregulation, the reduction of government’s role in the economy, and the dominance of market-oriented ideas, neoliberalism prioritizes education as a mechanism for producing human capital and advancing the global knowledge economy. However, the acquisition of human capital is left largely to individuals (and families). Decoteau (2013) observes that in such a context members of a society become “responsibilized” and “entrepreneurialized” as consumers of public goods. This is observed in Chicago’s discursive constructions of schooling where school choice is the dominant narrative and parents are now presented as responsible consumers who select the best educational alternatives for their children. Such constructions also merge market-oriented school reform with new attempts to achieve racial/ethnic integration as shifting demographics and attention to the role of educational institutions to promote equity have been redefined. In this context, a number of experiments are used to attract enrollment and achieve diversity. Our article draws from a four-year study of a student diversity initiative at an elite public high school during a transition from federal and district supported racial integration to integration based on economic class. The article argues that shifting demographics and educational policies coalesced with tax increment financing, an urban development tool, to manage diversity and accommodate an increasingly affluent clientele at the expense of minority groups, particularly African Americans.