School Choice, Research

After reading school choice I am just as unsettled about the issue as I was when I started. I grew up with neighborhood schools and thankfully lived in a diverse suburb outside of Houston which harvested a diverse school experience. However, throughout my experience as an undergrad and beyond in UGA’s education program, I have witnessed some highly segregated schools solely based on neighborhood attendance zones. The lower socioeconomic class can typically only afford homes in a few areas around town, and all those areas tend to feed into the same school(s). I don’t agree with this, but then on the other hand Athens-Clarke County has had the same result with school choice and they are therefore reverting back to neighborhood schools! The authors of the books suggested that Athens-Clarke didn’t have enough structure with school choice and that is why their model failed. I found myself frustrated that the only conclusion I could draw was “we’ll never know until we try.” The unknown is frightening and often assumed to be worse than the current situation. I wonder how “bad” things will have to get before we decide to take a risk.

For our research project we are planning on looking through articles about the benefits of co-teaching. We are taking a quantitative and qualitative approach. On the quantitative side we will look at the numbers the articles give us such as improved test scores percentages, etc. On the qualitative side we will look to see what children who are in co-taught classrooms are saying about their experience. Ajay suggested going through each child's quotes and pulling out words that are repeated. For example I would make a tick mark for every time a child says he or she is happy. This sort of transforms the qualitative to quantitative material. However, we will also include some direct quotes; because I think numbers are powerful, but voices and personal testimonies tug even harder on the heart strings.