Terri S. Wilson

University of Colorado Boulder | CUB · School of Education

Although technically open to all, charter schools often emphasize distinctive missions that appeal to particular groups of students and families. These missions, especially ones focusing on ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences, also contribute to segregation between schools. Such schools raise normative questions about the aims of education...

In this essay, I describe some of the methodological dimensions of my ongoing research into how parents choose schools. I particularly focus on how philosophical frameworks and analytical strategies have shaped the empirical portion of my research. My goal, in this essay, is to trace and explore the ways in which philosophy of education—as a method...

School choice positions parents as consumers who select schools that maximize their preferences. This account has been shaped by rational choice theory. In this essay, Terri Wilson contrasts a rational choice framework of preferences with John Dewey's understanding of interest. To illustrate this contrast, she draws on an example of one parent's sc...

An emerging body of research has explored “supply side” questions of school choice, or how schools and systems shape enrollment through locational decisions, recruitment, and marketing. This study focuses on how school websites market and communicate the distinct missions of charter schools to prospective families. Through a critical discourse anal...

In recent years, diverse actors around the world have protested the growing dominance of standardised testing in education policy and practice, citing racial equity as one reason, among many, to oppose standardised tests. Education activists have also argued, on the other hand, that standardised assessments can be used to bring attention to systemi...

Background/Context Recent movements to “opt out” of state assessments have brought together a broad and diverse group of activists. While many activists foreground concerns of equity and justice, opting out has been concentrated in affluent suburban communities. These differences highlight questions of power and privilege within the movement: in wh...

Through widespread “opt-out” efforts over the past several years, parent and student activists have pressured schools, districts, states, and the federal government to reconsider the extent and limits of state-mandated assessments. This case study focuses on the ethical questions faced by a principal in a school divided over state standardized test...

Recent efforts to opt out of assessments have focused attention on the role that testing plays in accountability reforms in the United States. While opt-out activists often invoke the disproportionate impact of these reforms on communities of color, opting out has been more widespread in mostly White, affluent, and suburban communities. This study...

In this essay, Michele Moses and Terri Wilson explore the recent movement to opt out of state tests. They situate this activism within a diverse line of efforts to refuse aspects of public education, asking how to evaluate the democratic legitimacy of different kinds of refusal in public education. Drawing on specific examples of opting out, they p...

School choice has the potential to be a tool for desegregation, but research suggests that choice more often exacerbates segregation than remedies it. In the past several years, hundreds of ‘intentionally diverse’ charter schools have opened across the country, potentially countering the link between charter schools and segregation. Yet, these scho...

While scholars develop research with clear implications for policy and practice, this work has been largely ineffective in influencing thought beyond the academy. In this article, we explore challenges researchers face in designing public scholarship to influence policy. To illustrate, we profile one such effort, the “Opportunity to Learn Index,” a...

This chapter focuses on the philosophical questions and tensions involved in the phenomenon of charter schools (United States), free schools (United Kingdom), and similar schools that give students and parents greater choice within public school systems. After a brief review of these reforms and their shared rationales, I focus on the philosophical...

In recent years, widespread efforts to “opt out” of state tests have pressured school districts, states, and the federal government to reconsider the extent and limits of state assessments. This activism raises a number of questions about the relationship between democratic participation and public institutions. What is the relationship between sta...

This chapter summarizes philosophical questions raised by school choice reforms in the United States. School choice reforms reshape commonly understood definitions between public and private education. In doing so, choice creates new opportunities and liberties for certain communities and families; it also raises questions about the privatization o...

I. Introduction Dewey begins this chapter with a simple—but telling—contrast: the difference between an agent and a spectator. The spectator is " indifferent to what is going on; one result is just as good as another, since each is just something to look at. " 1 In contrast, the agent is " bound up with what is going on; its outcome makes a differe...

Autonomy operates as a key term in debates about the rights of families to choose distinct approaches to education. Yet, what autonomy means is often complicated by the actual circumstances and contexts of schools, families, and children. In this essay, Terri S. Wilson and Matthew A. Ryg focus on the challenges involved in translating an ideal of e...

Many scholars have pursued philosophical inquiry through empirical research. These empirical projects have been shaped—to varying degrees and in different ways—by philosophical questions, traditions, frameworks and analytic approaches. This issue explores the methodological challenges and opportunities involved in these kinds of projects. In this e...

In this essay, Terri Wilson puts the argument developed by Kathleen Knight Abowitz that charter schools could be considered as counterpublic spaces into interaction with empirical research that explores patterns of voluntary self-segregation in charter schools. Wilson returns to the theoretical tension between Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser over...

This essay began as an exploration of—and interest in—the work of Elsie Ripley Clapp, a student, graduate assistant and long-standing colleague of John Dewey. In considering the questions that prompted this group of essays, I found myself remembering Clapp's account of her graduate studies at Columbia University and the warmth, generosity and encou...

This symposium provides five case studies of the ways that John Dewey's philosophy and practice were influenced by women or "weirdoes" (our choices include F.M. Alexander, Albert Barnes, Helen Bradford Thompson, Elsie Riply Clapp, and Jane Addams) and presents some conclusions about the value of dialoging across difference for philosophers and othe...

Questions exploring the relationship between education and science have ebbed and flowed throughout this past century, in response to changing political pressures, evolving conceptions of science, and the emergence of education as a particular field of study. While these questions are not new, the debate over what forms of educational research are...