Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Vesperi, Maria

Keywords

Ethnography, Sarasota, Florida, Booker High School, Visual and Performing Arts, Education

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

My ethnographic research was conducted at the Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) magnet program at Booker High School in Sarasota, Florida in the 2014-2015 school year. Booker was historically an all black neighborhood school and in 1979 the VPA was employed as a strategy for integrating the study body. I explore this complicated history of the VPA’s position within Booker and pursue a more nuanced understanding of how the program serves the student body today. Engaging with the history of school choice policy, I explore how the choice to be involved in this intensive program has particular meanings for its students and the way school choice is embedded within the goals Booker’s leaders have for their school.

Share

COinS