The politics of parent choice in public education: the choice movement in North Carolina and the United States (First edition.)

To tell the story of the modern school choice movement in America, Wayne D. Lewis elucidates what can be learned from the campaign by North Carolina parent choice advocates for the creation and expansion of school choice policies in the state. The exploration of the politics, ideology, and interests surrounding parent choice in this conversation includes but also stretches beyond the frequently discussed choice policies of charter schools, school vouchers, and tuition tax credits. In this work, Lewis makes the argument that parents' push for these policies is closely akin to parents' rejection of busing and redistricting policies in Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Raleigh-Durham, their advocacy for the state-support of home-schooling options across the state, and their campaign for the expansion of magnet and intradistrict choice options. Central to parents' advocacy for all of these policies, argues Lewis, lies a more foundational desire to reconceputalize public schooling such that parents have much more individual control over how public funding is used for the education of their children.