High Pressure Reform: Examining Urban Schools’ Response to Multiple School Choice Policies

Over the past several decades, policymakers have sought to address the problem of school failure by exposing traditional public schools to competitive market forces. In this analysis, we examine how two traditional public schools in a “high pressure/high choice” urban school cluster in Texas responded to a number of overlapping choice policies that have caused them to lose significant numbers of students. We explore how these two traditional public schools made sense of, and formulated a response to, their multiple “competitors,” how they balanced market pressures and the other external (accountability) pressures that they faced. In this analysis, we illustrate how competition does not always lead to significant or productive change in low performing schools.