MESA, Ariz.
David Garcia, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, has been selected as a 2008-2009 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow to research the convergence of school choice and school accountability with the diversification of the Latino population in the United States.
Garcia, of the Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in ASU's Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, is one of 20 fellows selected this year from more than 150 applicants. He will receive a $55,000 award for the two-year fellowship.
“Dr. Garcia's study to examine the diversification of the Hispanic community and the union of accountability and school choice policies has the potential to provide critically important information for Arizona and the nation,” says Stafford Hood, associate dean for research with the Fulton College. “The steady and rapid increase of the Hispanic population in major urban areas in the Midwest, South and East Coast -- where they had not typically been present in large numbers -- increases the potential of Dr. Garcia's research to inform state and federal policy-makers. His work has consistently been of high quality, and many of us eagerly await what we might learn from this particular project.”
In Arizona, school choice offers students the opportunity to attend public, charter or private schools. Garcia says evidence indicates school choice also leads to self-segregation, but previous studies looked only at non-Hispanic students.
“There has been no consistent stream of research on Latinos and school choice,” he says. “The research does reveal that students who leave traditional public schools tend to attend charter schools with others of the same race. Latinos, however, do not.”
Garcia says previous studies has not looked at the viewpoint of Latino parents, who might have strong opinions that could shape school policy.
Garcia intends to take into account the fact that Latinos differ from other minority groups in that they have assimilated over generations and are more likely to live in mixed-race neighborhoods. At the same time, new immigrants are changing community dynamics nationwide. This shift is largely unexplored in the area of school choice, Garcia says.
