Views of Education

Abstract

This chapter examines the ways in which the parents interviewed use the logic and rhetoric of the school choice movement to talk about their search for alternatives to their local public schools when they see an incompatibility between what they think their children need out of their education, and what schools are providing. The school choice model, which is the outcome of neoliberal education reform, has, ironically, resulted in increased standardization of schools, with a corresponding decrease in individual and collective efficacy of teachers to advocate for their students. The author argues that these twin trends, when combined with the increased pressure for mothers to manage the individual needs of their children, effectively pit motherhood and public schools against each other. Mothers feel forced to take an oppositional stance toward public school to ensure that their children’s needs are met. When these needs are not met, the responsibility falls on the mother, not the school, to find an alternative solution. These narratives reveal how some mothers feel pushed into homeschooling, seeing it as a “choice” that they were forced into when faced with a lack of alternatives.