While reading Poole, Fallon and Sen’s article about how school districts’ differing abilities to compete for international student tuition creates inequities between school boards I couldn’t help but think about the education market in my own city, Memphis, Tennessee, USA, and how this approach to addressing achievement and opportunity gaps in its schools also perpetuates rather than eradicates inequality. Memphis is located in Shelby County, an area with many school types. One type includes traditional public schools located in eight local school districts. In 2013, Memphis City Schools merged with the suburban county district to form Shelby County Schools (the largest school district in Tennessee). However, in 2014 six suburban towns from the new Shelby County Schools formed their own municipal school systems (known as the de-merger). Students attending schools within the newer six districts are predominantly upper middle class/affluent White, while students in the remaining Shelby County School District are predominantly African American (approximately 76.7%) and over half live at or below the poverty level. A second type of school in Shelby County are schools that are part of the state’s Achievement School District (ASD). To respond to the academic failure of some in the state schools, the Tennessee Department of Education utilized resources from federal Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants in 2010 to reform schools in the newly created Achievement School District. Operating like a local education agency (Kim, Field, and Hargrave 2015), this initiative aims to improve public and charter schools that are in the bottom five percent (5%) of student performance (known as ‘priority schools’) to the top 25% across the state within 5 years. In 2018–2019 there were 28 schools in the Achievement School District in the Memphis area. Schools in the Achievement School District include direct-run schools, authorized charter schools, and schools run by other non-profit management organizations (Bauman 2017; Kim, Field, and Hargrave 2015). The ASD faces many of the same issues inner city schools confront such as student mobility, hiring high performing educators, and administrative turnovers. Students within these schools face extreme poverty and limited access to high quality schools (via school choice). The ASD has shown very little improvement in academic progress within its first six years (Aldrich and Bauman 2019) and continues to struggle with community support (Gonzales 2016), high teacher turnover, and low student enrollment (Aldrich and Bauman 2019).

中文翻译：

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孟菲斯学校择校的幻灭：对“资金来源私有化和公共教育不公平的空间性”的回应

在阅读 Poole、Fallon 和 Sen 的文章时，关于学区竞争国际学生学费的不同能力如何造成学校董事会之间的不平等，我不禁思考了我自己的城市，美国田纳西州孟菲斯的教育市场，以及如何这种解决学校成就和机会差距的方法也延续而不是消除不平等。孟菲斯位于谢尔比县，该地区拥有多种学校类型。一种类型包括位于八个当地学区的传统公立学校。2013 年，孟菲斯市学校与郊区县区合并成立谢尔比县学校（田纳西州最大的学区）。然而，2014 年，来自新谢尔比县学校的六个郊区城镇形成了自己的市政学校系统（称为分拆）。在较新的六个学区上学的学生主要是中上阶层/富裕的白人，而其余谢尔比县学区的学生主要是非裔美国人（约 76.7%），一半以上的学生生活在贫困线以下。谢尔比县的第二种学校是属于该州成就学区 (ASD) 的学校。为了应对州立学校中一些学业上的失败，田纳西州教育部在 2010 年利用联邦“争霸”和“学校改进补助金”中的资源对新建的 Achievement 学区的学校进行了改革。像当地教育机构一样运作（Kim、Field 和 Hargrave 2015），该计划旨在在 5 年内将学生成绩排名最低的 5% (5%) 的公立和特许学校（称为“优先学校”）提高到全州排名前 25% 的学校。2018-2019 年，孟菲斯地区的成就学区有 28 所学校。成就学区的学校包括直营学校、授权特许学校和由其他非营利管理组织经营的学校（Bauman 2017；Kim、Field 和 Hargrave 2015）。ASD 面临着市中心学校面临的许多相同问题，例如学生流动性、聘请高绩效教育工作者和行政人员流失。这些学校的学生面临极端贫困和进入高质量学校的机会有限（通过学校选择）。