In this article, based on an ethnographic study in Sundale City, Arizona, I use an interpretive and anthropological approach to policy analysis to highlight how social actors interpreted the national charter school debate to enact local school choice policy development in their everyday lives. Specifically, findings from this study provide a…

Scholars who document neoliberal trends in education argue that privatization and corporatization in schools is dehumanizing and discourages democratic participation. These scholars assert that neoliberal education policies heighten social inequity by emphasizing individualism, marketability and colorblindness without interrogating social…

Social scientists have begun to document the stratifying effects of over a decade of unprecedented charter growth in urban districts. An exodus of students from traditional neighborhood schools to charter schools has attended this growth, creating troubling numbers of vacant seats in neighborhood schools as well as concentrating larger percentages…