This essay combines an ecological perspective with a mobility justice theoretical framework to reconceptualize the relationship between school transportation and educational access. Authors Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Jeremy Singer, Kimberly Stokes, James Bear Mahowald, and Sahar Khawaja document the problem of “getting to school” that is at the intersection of students’ family, community, and social contexts and how it goes beyond whether there is a reliable mode of physical transportation. Bringing together a historical analysis of the policy landscape and interview data from parents and students in Detroit, they find that school transportation problems reflect the unequal political, social, and economic context in which families navigate enrollment and attendance. They discuss how policy makers can advance mobility justice in school policy by equitably distributing transportation resources, engaging students and parents as experts in developing and communicating transportation policy, and using institutional power to remedy structural barriers to educational access.
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Sarah Winchell Lenhoff (
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1025-8219) is the Leonard Kaplan Endowed Professor and an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Wayne State University. She is the director of the Detroit Education Research Partnership. Her research examines how education policy shapes access to educational opportunity in urban public schools. Her work has been published in
American Educational Research Journal,
Educational Policy,
Journal of Education Policy, and
Teachers College Record, among others.
Jeremy Singer (
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2666-2972) is a PhD candidate in educational leadership and policy studies at Wayne State University and a research assistant for the Detroit Education Research Partnership. His research focuses broadly on the intersections of educational policy and racial and socioeconomic inequality. He formerly taught in the Detroit Public Schools.
Kimberly Stokes (
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9335-2560) is a doctoral student in the Counseling Psychology program at Wayne State University. Her research focuses on maternal mental wellness and early childhood positive racial identity development in Black families. She seeks to create culturally-responsive, community-based mental health interventions for underserved populations. Kimberly serves as a Co-Investigator of the Detroit Family Wellness Project, research lead for the Invincible Black Women therapy initiative, and a graduate research assistant for the Detroit Education Research Partnership. Kimberly is a certified elementary educator who has taught kindergarten and third grade in Brooklyn, New York, and Berkley, Michigan.
James Bear Mahowald is a PhD candidate at Wayne State University in Detroit. Additionally, they work full time at the education non-profit City Year Inc overseeing work in both Detroit and Seattle. They got their start in education with Seattle Public Schools in 2013 as a social-emotional learning coach while also completing their M.Ed at Northeastern University. Their research centers on school discipline and the school-prison nexus.
Sahar Khawaja is a doctoral student in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Denver. Her research centers on the educational experiences, and the needs of minoritized students, especially Muslim students. Sahar serves as a Graduate Research Assistant in the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver. She has also participated in projects related to deeper learning and community-based research.