Constructing (Dis)ability through participation in early childhood markets: Preschool leaders’ enrolment decision-making

This article employs a critical case study (critical disability studies and critical policy analysis) to unpack how leaders in publicly funded private prekindergarten programs invoke conceptions of normality, and subsequently abnormality, during decision-making processes for student (dis)enrolment. More specifically, this research is concerned with ways private preschool leaders’ constructions of disability are implicated in decision-making affecting student enrolment and disenrollment, thereby facilitating constructions of children’s participation in this state-sanctioned early childhood education program. Three leadership teams at private preschools participated in responsive interviews, observations, and provided policy and curricular documents for analysis. Findings reveal how policy, market, and preschool leaders’ conceptions of (ab)normality influenced decision-making rationales and outcomes affecting (dis)enrolled students. Additionally, findings indicated leaders’ sense of identity impacted their interpretation of and reaction to program polices, local market pressures, and their construction of the “good consumer”—a parent/child dyad prepared for rigor with the exhibition of self-control. This research evinces complexities undergirding leaders’ decision-making when choosing to (dis)enrol students in publicly-funded voucher programs on privately-driven markets and how decisions function to (re)shape (dis)ability discourses in early childhood

Bottom-Line Choices: Effects of Market Ideology in Florida’s Voluntary Preschool Policies

The purpose of this paper is to uncover systems of reasoning and taken-for-granted assumptions embedded within Florida’s Voluntary Preschool Education Program (VPK) policies and their implications on matters of social justice. Systems of reasoning based upon market ideology and assumptions of good economic actors, resulting from influences of conservative modernism, are identified and found to facilitate policies failing to ensure children’s constitutional right to “high quality pre-kindergarten” (Florida Constitution [Fla. Const.] art. IX, § 1(b), 2002). The authors argue that these policies intensify exclusion through institutionalized problematizing of students and act to perpetuate discriminatory and unjust practices of schooling, in this case at the preschool level. Florida’s constitution, statutes, regulations, and other government documents are analyzed to provide insight into the systems of reasoning and taken-for-granted assumptions embedded within VPK policies. Influences from conservative modernism are identified during negotiations in policy development, issues of access within the program’s choice discourses are examined, and mechanisms for exclusion embedded in these policies revealing institutional problematizing practices are analyzed. Implications for children and families historically marginalized and disempowered are discussed along with recommendations for more socially just policies and practices

Enrollment and Disenrollment in Voluntary Prekindergarten: A Study of Educational Leaders’ Decision-Making

This qualitative case study focused on how school leaders’ understandings of (dis)ability were implicated in decision-making and affected student (dis)enrollment in Florida’s Voluntary Prekindergarten Program (VPK). More specifically it explored how leaders in private VPK programs invoked conceptions of normality, and subsequently abnormality, during decision-making processes for student (dis)enrollment. Combining a critical poststructuralist approach (critical disability studies, critical policy analysis), decision-making on (dis)enrollment was contextualized within the current policy ecology. This policy ecology was framed as an historical development of policies regarding preschool for children with and without disabilities in a marketplace shaped by the convergence of federal, state, and local policy, which tended to be based on deficit-oriented perspectives of disability that functioned to (re)constructed what was understood as (dis)ability. Further, findings focused on how policy, market, and VPK leaders’ understanding of (dis)ability influenced decision-making rationales and outcomes affecting (dis)enrolled students. Findings indicated their sense of identity impacted their interpretation of and reaction to program polices, local market pressures and their construction of the “good consumer”—a parent/child dyad prepared for rigor and the exhibition of self-control. Reciprocity emerged as a theme and suggested good consumers reinforced VPK leaders’ desired identity. In addition, VPK leaders’ justified enrollment and disenrollment decisions within a continuum of exchanges that occurred between consumers and themselves. Leaders who embraced service or spiritual based leadership practices tended to be more inclusive of children with diverse needs. Implications for future research should address 1) how VPK leaders include children with a range of abilities in their (pre)schools, 2) examine parents’ decision-making practices about their child’s (dis)enrollment in VPK centers, 3) policy clarification at the intersection of IDEA, ADA, and VPK, and 4) explore how local education agencies and private preschools can build infrastructure to support the inclusion of children with diverse learning needs in VPK centers. Such research can shed light on the complexity of decision-making with respect to enrollment for publicly-funded voucher programs on the private VPK market and how those decisions function to (re)shape discourses of normality in early childhood