Finding Space and Managing Distance: Public School Choice in an Urban California District

Abstract

The paper examines sociospatial issues for two forms of school choice that are popular in the US, magnet schools and charter schools. It argues that geographical analyses can be taken up to expand understandings of such issues as the spatial organisation of race in public school choice plans, how rapidly increasing immigrant student populations impact classroom space in urban districts and parents' everyday challenges managing the distances between home and school. The geographical analysis of data from a two-year ethnographic study of a large school district in the Los Angeles metropolitan region found that, by offering choice to those who are unable to accomplish choice unless they have necessary resources such as time and supports such as transport, districts may inadvertently be perpetuating the historical inequities and inequalities that have stubbornly embedded themselves into the sociospatial relations of urban schooling.