School Choice: Who Does the Choosing?

We welcome back Dr. Ujju Aggarwal, assistant professor at The New School, to speak about her book, Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education. In Unsettling Choice, Dr. Aggarwal focuses on the intersection of public education and gentrification. The book is based on her work with mothers at a Head Start center in NYC. We discuss the race and class discrimination the parents faced and whether exclusion is inherent in school choice programs.

Overview

00:00-00:56 Intros

00:56-07:13 Working with Head Start mothers in Manhattan’s Community School District 3

07:13-09:15 Connection between school choice and austerity

09:15-19:17 Issues mothers faced in choosing schools for their children and their experiences

19:17-24:06 The “post-Brown realignment” following the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court decisions

24:06-25:30 Parents as “consumers” rather than as “citizens”

25:30-28:01 Can school choice exist without exclusion

28:01-29:03 NYC Schools Chancellor Samuels and citywide integration

29:03-32:21 Radical municipalism

32:21- Outro

Transcript

Click here to listen to see the full transcript of this episode. 

References

• Book "Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education" by Dr. Ujju Aggarwal
• Listen to our first interview "Ujju Aggarwal on school choice, whiteness as property, and the “right to exclude” published in 2019

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear