Copyright by Michelle Lea Mott 2019 The Dissertation Committee for Michelle Lea Mott Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Dissertation: Tides of the Changing Same: Race, Class, Gender and School Choice in Neoliberal Times Committee: Sharmila Rudrappa, Supervisor Simone Browne Ben Carrington Deborah Palmer Eric Tang Michael Young Tides of the Changing Same: Race, Class, Gender and School Choice in Neoliberal Times by Michelle Lea Mott Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2019 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Sharmila Rudrappa for her continued guidance and support for this project. From her early suggestion that I consider Vista Elementary as a site to explore my nascent theoretical interests, her brilliance, kindness, and insight has shaped the contours of this project and my scholarship in countless ways. Thank you, also, to Ben Carrington, whose guidance in the early part of my academic career and his supervision of my MA thesis continues to inform my thinking and my writing. Simone Browne has been a model in her scholarship and her teaching, and I am truly grateful for having been able learn from her during my time at the University of Texas. I would not have been able to do this project without Deborah Palmer’s generosity in letting me join her research project on the implementation of two-way dual language education. Thank you to Deborah for that opportunity and for her work on bilingual education, which was foundational to this project. Michael Young’s infectious enthusiasm for sociological theory and benevolent manor of providing critical feedback have both inspired my thinking and my teaching. Thank you to Eric Tang, whose activism and scholarship have informed this project and provided a veritable example of what it means to be an activist- scholar. I am incredibly appreciative of the time and the feedback that I have received on this project from all of the committee members. All future iterations of this project will assuredly bear the mark of their critical reflections and be the better for it. I would like to thank the families, the teachers, and the administrators at Vista Elementary School. Everyone at the school was so welcoming and so giving of their time. It was a real honor for the families and the teachers at the school to share their stories and make themselves vulnerable to the observational and theoretical interpretations of the scholars conducting research in the school. Thank you very much to Dan Heiman, who facilitated my entry into the school and was such an important point of contact throughout my time there. iv There are a number of people that I had the pleasure of knowing during my time in Austin and at the University of Texas that have certainly shaped my world view and to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude. Thank you to Matt Richardson, whose class on Black Feminist Theory and guidance on my MA thesis shaped my entire academic trajectory. Kristen Hogan was a lovely mentor during my transition from the interdisciplinary field of Women and Gender Studies into the disciplined field of Sociology. I am especially grateful to Kristen for being an exemplar of living out feminist praxis. Thank you to Priscilla Hale and Dr. Rose Pulliam, whose friendship transformed my life and my understanding of the world in many ways. Thank you to Anjali Lal for being such an important comrade in learning in my early years at the University of Texas. Within the Department of Sociology, I was quite lucky to move through the program with a number of brilliant and motivated scholars. My time in the program was especially impacted by the company and smarts of: Brandon Robinson, Emily Spangenberg, Amanda Stevenson, Maggie Tate, and Amina Zarrugh. A thank you is insufficient to express my gratitude for the love and support of my parents, Ben and Bernie Mott. Even though they have no idea what this dissertation is about or why I have written it, they have both contributed to its coming into being more than they will ever know. Thank you to my best friends in life, Tanya Tzovarras and DeAnn Alcantara Thompson, for believing in me and reminding me to believe in myself. Thank you to my furry writing buddy, and retired beauty queen, Phoebe (aka Phoebe Jo, aka Phoebe Jo Josephine, aka PJ Le Pew), who kept me company and kept my spirits raised during the many solitary hours of writing. Last, but certainly not least, thank you to Travis Beaver for so much, including (but not limited to): love, patience, care, kindness, rooting me on, keeping me fed, reading/editing my drafts, making me laugh, sharing your genius, and being my partner in learning about life and how to live it. v Abstract Tides of the Changing Same: Race, Class, Gender and School Choice in Neoliberal Times Michelle Lea Mott, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2019 Supervisor: Sharmila Rudrappa In many public school districts across the nation, the policy of allowing parents to select the school their child attends is gaining greater popularity. Advocates for this policy argue that it enables the public sector to function more like the private sector, putting the onus of success and high achievement on the schools directly. As the theory goes, the market-based policies of competition and tethering funding to performance incentivizes school improvement that will benefit the educational needs and outcomes for all students. Critics of this policy argue that this neoliberal model exacerbates existing inequities in the distribution of economic resources and educational attainments. In this dissertation, I use ethnographic methods to explore what happens when school choice policies and practices intersect with neoliberal urbanism. The research for this project was conducted in an urban school that adopted specialized bilingual English-Spanish immersion programming as both a means to thwart declining student enrollment resulting from neighborhood gentrification and to serve the existing population of working class and low-income, predominately Latinx, students. As the school and the dual-language programming gain greater popularity, and as the neighborhood continues to see higher vi costs for housing, the school population becomes increasingly middle-class. Basing my study in a two-way dual language immersion school in a rapidly gentrifying urban area, I explore questions of belonging, equity, and resource allocation in neoliberal times. This study looks at the ways that teachers, administrators, and parents of disparate racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, national, and linguistic subjectivities interact and respond to school integration and (re)segregation. In the end, I argue that as the modes for securing middle-class advantages are part and parcel of our educational structure, they work alongside and through other mechanisms of (re)producing social inequalities along racialized, classed, and gendered lines. vii Table of Contents Chapter One- Introduction: Living in Neoliberal Times ................................................... 1 Background ............................................................................................................ 7 Austin and Neoliberal Urbanism ................................................................. 7 Austin Independent School District ........................................................... 16 School Choice ........................................................................................... 21 Theoretical Frameworks ....................................................................................... 28 Education and the Reproduction of Class .................................................. 28 Race, Class, and Gender ............................................................................ 35 Research Questions and Methods ......................................................................... 39 Research Questions ................................................................................... 39 Research Design ....................................................................................... 40 Participant Observation ............................................................................. 41 In-depth Interviews ................................................................................... 43 Positionality .............................................................................................. 44 Vista Elementary .................................................................................................. 45 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 50 Notes for Chapter One .......................................................................................... 51 Chapter Two- “Somos Vista”: Race, Class, and Belonging at the School ....................... 52 Bilingual Education: Who is it for? ....................................................................... 60 Traditional Vista Families ......................................................................... 63 Heritage Language Claims ........................................................................ 67 Equity concerns ........................................................................................ 75 viii Belonging to Vista ...............................................................................................