Abstract
Under the provision of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), public school choice was hailed as a significant reform to address the persisting achievement gap between Black, Latino/a, Native American, immigrant students, and their White counterparts. Charter schools were hailed as models for reshaping the school options available to minoritized youth. This chapter offers an ethnographic portrait of an Indigenous-serving culturally responsive charter school in Arizona, and analyzes school choice through the eyes of its students, teachers, and parents. Although the school was described as a significant learning environment by students, parents, and educators, failure to meet NCLB standardized testing benchmarks resulted in the schools’ designation as a “failing” school in 2009,, prompting its untimely closure. This case study underscores the catch-22 of choice policy for the poor and minoritized: local autonomy and innovation hamstrung by narrow, one-size-fits-all, high-stakes accountability measurements. Findings from this case indicate that charter school policy can offer access to culturally responsive, community driven schooling. However, when policy is coupled with shallow accountability measurements, choice fails to offer the systemic support needed for sustainable, equitable educational change for minoritized youth.