Hope for Whom?

In Florida, persistently low-performing schools generally service high concentrations of minority and free and reduced-price lunch students. As minority demographics grow throughout Florida (Florida Office of Economic & Demographic Research, 2017), so does the potential for increases in the number of persistently low-performing schools. In 2017, Florida lawmakers passed House Bill 7069, which includes the Schools of Hope policy. This policy incentivizes charter schools to compete for the rights to educate students in areas of persistently low-performing schools. This critical race theory policy analysis examined Florida’s Schools of Hope policy at the intersection of race, poverty, education, and policy to explore its potential to address performance outcomes of economically disadvantaged Black students attending persistently low-performing schools. The use of critical race theory to conduct this critical policy analysis provided a framework to evaluate the Schools of Hope policy and its potential to remove or reinforce the status quo for large populations of economically disadvantaged Black students attending persistently low-performing schools. Additionally, the use of the critical race theory tenet narrative/storytelling and counter-narrative/counter-storytelling to conduct semi-structured interviews allowed key stakeholders to provide insights about the policy in their local context and be a part of the policy discourse. This policy analysis presented what was learned about the Schools of Hope policy when the four critical race theory tenets—critique of liberalism, interest convergence, permanence of racism, and narratives/storytelling—were used to analyze it.