Berkeley Review of Education

Introduction to Volume 5, Issue 2.

Transnational Asian adoptees are a unique and understudied population that potentially faces oppression and confusion. Educational institutions are often unresponsive to the needs of immigrant groups, particularly ones with unique circumstances like transnational Asian adoptees. Not only is there a gap generally in the critical and empirical literature across fields when it comes to this population, but it is almost entirely missing from the educational literature. This conceptual paper contributes a better understanding of transnational adoptees through a third space framework. We seek to critically analyze and synthesize the literature on transnational Asian adoptees. The outcome of the investigation bridges the adoption and education literature, situating it within the educational context. In doing so, we present educational implications of transnational Asian adoption that lay the groundwork for much needed empirical analyses.

Detrimental side effects of the politics of localism include socioeconomic and racial inequalities across fragmented contiguous school districts. Inequality follows patterns of neighborhood segregation and suburban expansion. Some regions approach these issues through collaborative models of cross-district school choice that focus shared resources toward reducing disparities. In Calderon County, California2, however, districts have elected to use a non- collaborative, voluntary, and colorblind inter-district transfer plan, in which district administrators evaluate requests on a case-by-case basis. Interviews with these administrators and local citizens reveal a process plagued by a history of racial and socioeconomic division that may be exacerbating stratification. This study demonstrates that administrators, who often interact directly with families, wield extraordinary policy and decision-making power, significantly controlling inter-district mobility in the region. While exploratory in nature, this research reveals meaningful findings on fragmentation, community perceptions, and administrative decision-making within the context of school choice in one Northern California region.

Over the past five years, marriage equality and charter schools have emerged at the forefront of political conversations about equality and rights. Some argue that these policies extend access to certain benefits and opportunities to historically oppressed communities, thus furthering liberalism and egalitarianism. In this article, I engage these arguments by exploring how and why people from dominant cultures come to support marriage equality or charter schools despite not directly benefitting from these policy initiatives. Drawing upon queer theory and critical education policy studies, I utilize two terms—homonormativity and charternormativity—to describe how public arguments supporting marriage equality and charter schools elevate particular identities and normative behaviors for gay people and people of color. I theorize these similarities to reveal a process of policy legitimation that I call the affective-spatio-temporal-fixed—a concept that provides insight into why and how some policies that claim to promote increased equity gain traction in the neoliberal present whereas others do not.

As the academic year of 2014–2015 began, the killing of Mike Brown, the failure to indict Darren Wilson, and the protests and contentious dialogue surrounding these events again exposed fissures that exist in society as a result of (but not limited to) the dynamics of race, class, and gender. In response to these events, and in an effort to engage in dialogue with the educators, students, protestors, and academics who were participating in these movements, the Berkeley Review of Education issued its first “Call for Conversations” (CFC). This is an edited selection of the short works first published on our website in January and March of 2014.