“Hay puros blanquitos casi” (“There are almost all whites”): Families’ raced and classed experiences with school choice and exclusion

Background: School choice policies have expanded rapidly across the United States over the past several decades, especially in the state of Arizona. Research suggests that widespread school choice policies have had negative consequences for minoritized families. However, more research is needed to better understand the experiences of minoritized families with school choice policies. Purpose: We examine a specialized public school in Arizona with high out-of-district open enrollment, located within a gentrifying, working-class community of color. Using the lenses of Whiteness as Property and racial capitalism, we highlight how racial, legal, and economic forces led families of color to be displaced and dispossessed of rights to equitable access to schools. We respond to the following research question: How do race and social class shape families’ experiences with a school embedded in a district that is navigating and leveraging Arizona’s competitive school choice environment? Research Design: To address our research question, we conducted a qualitative embedded case study of a focal school. An embedded case study, which entails one or more subunits of analysis, is well-suited to our study in that we consider the subunit of the school as embedded in its school district, within the context of Arizona’s hypercompetitive school choice policy landscape. We interviewed in-district and out-of-district parents with and without access to the school, district administrators, and school board members. In addition, we conducted observations and collected publicly available documents. Conclusions: Our research provides a window into the ways that ostensibly innocuous school choice policies may displace and dispossess families of color of various social classes. Based on this study, we offer several implications. First, our study shows the necessity of using a theoretical lens that accounts for the intrinsic nature of racism in our policy, legal, and economic systems. Second, the research demonstrates a clear connection between families’ educational displacement and dispossession, and Arizona’s hypercompetitive school choice environment. Third, our study illustrates how school districts, as they navigate a competitive school choice landscape to compete for enrollment, may leverage school choice policies in ways that displace or dispossess families of color across social classes.