Charter schools as postmodern paradox: Rethinking social stratification inan age of deregulated school choice

For the last two-and-a-half years, authors Amy Stuart Wells, Alejandra Lope z, Janelle Scott, and Jennifer Jellison Holme have been engaged with a team of researchers in a comprehensive qualitative study of charter schools in ten California school districts. They have emerged from this study with a n ew understanding of how the implementation of a specific education policy c an reflect much broader social changes, including the transformation from m odernity to postmodernity. Given that much of the literature on postmoderni ty is theoretical in nature, this article invites readers to wrestle with t he complexity that results when theory meets the day-to-day experiences of people trying to start schools. In their study, the authors examined how pe ople in different social locations define the possibilities for localized s ocial movements, and how they see the potential threat of greater inequalit y resulting from this reform within and among communities. They started wit h a framework that questioned how charter schools came into being at this p articular time that is characterized by global economic developments and de mands for a more deregulated state education system. This framework allowed the authors to examine the particularistic nature of a reform that defies universal definitions. Their purpose was not to definitively state whether or not charter school reform is "working; " or whether or not it is leading to greater social stratification across broad categories of race, class, a nd gender. Rather, the authors focused on understanding how modern identiti es and postmodern ideologies converge and, thus, for whom charter school re form is "working," under what conditions, and on whose terms.