Between public and private: Parents and distinctive schools of choice

This dissertation examines the normative dimensions of parents' school choices. While the values, identities and interests of parents are central to the overall logic of choice, they remain largely absent from a growing body of research on how parents make school choices. This research has largely been framed by rational choice theory. This research, while acknowledging the importance of normative values, identities and interests in the formation of parents' preferences, does not necessarily offer many resources for understanding these dimensions of choice. Against this omission, this dissertation explores how we might understand the moral, ethical and political complexity of parents' choices. In particular, I focus on how distinctive schools of choice draw students and parents into new communities organized around their particular educational interests. I suggest that these interests are an essential part of understanding the different claims made on behalf of new schools of choice, particularly ones organized around the identities of ethnic, cultural and linguistic communities.;This dissertation is both conceptual and empirical. I first review and evaluate two areas of literature. In Chapter 2, I examine how philosophy has taken up normative questions in school choice. I examine empirical research on parent choice in Chapter 3, pointing towards the evolving strengths---and possible omissions---in research on how parents choose schools. Through these chapters, I hope to demonstrate that existing frameworks---both philosophical and empirical---miss certain dimensions of parents' experiences with school choice. Drawing on this review, the central chapters of this study focus on an inter-related set of conceptual explorations into the nature of interest in school choice. In Chapter 4, building on an exploration of Dewey, I argue that the concept of interest, as opposed to preference, offers a different conceptual vocabulary for understanding the normative dimensions of choice. In Chapter 5, I place this concept in conversation with theoretical claims---in Habermas, Fraser and Dewey---that charter schools might be understood to be new kinds of public---and, more specifically, counterpublic---spaces. I argue that these theorists provide alternate conceptual resources for understanding the meaning and significance---in ethical, moral and political terms---of distinctive schools of choice.;Building on this new conceptual vocabulary, I turn to a closer exploration of parents' choices in two distinctive school communities. Each of these schools---as communities organized around particular cultural and linguistic identities---offer unique environments for exploring central theoretical assumptions about choice. I concentrate on the experiences of parents in these two schools. I examine these experiences along two dimensions: (1) how might we understand parents' interests in choosing these schools? And, (2) in what ways do parents understand these schools as public spaces? Through observations and in-depth qualitative interviews, I disclose some of the dynamic processes and complex negotiations involved in making these difficult school choices. I explore parents' evolving and manifold sense of their interests in these schools. I argue that exploring the moral, ethical and political dimensions of parents' decisions might help us better understand---and evaluate---the ways in which such schools advance the public purposes of education.