Divergent Trends in Neighborhood and School Segregation in the Age of School Choice

This study seeks to identify changes in neighborhood and school segregation during the age of rapidly expanding school choice. Prior to 1991, public-school choice was limited. While magnet schools existed and a number of interdistrict transfer programs were in place, few public-school students left their neighborhoods to receive an education. During the past 25 years, the number of public-school choice options has exploded. Today, more than 10% of public-school students attend either a charter school or a magnet school, and many of these schools of choice are concentrated in urban areas. In order to understand how the combination of demographic changes and the expansion of school choice have shaped neighborhoods and schools, this study provides an analysis of levels of racial/ethnic diversity and integration in the 100 most populous U.S. cities and their accompanying school districts. Results of this analysis demonstrate that levels of diversity have risen dramatically in most urban areas as well as in most school districts. Concurrently, an overwhelming majority of cities have experienced increases in neighborhood-level integration while a large majority of schools in their accompanying districts have become increasingly segregated. These divergent patterns in neighborhood and school segregation are cause for alarm and require the immediate attention of policymakers and the public.     

School Choice as a Civil Right: District Responses to Competition and Equal Educational Opportunity

Using geographic representations to examine choice policies and patterns in a major urban area, this analysis considers how districts in a metropolitan area are responding to competitive incentives in arranging options for African American students. The findings demonstrate that the distribution of districts' school choice policies exclude poorer students of color from the more preferred school options. The decision of districts to open or close their boundaries to non-residents is tied to both the physical proximity of districts to poorer communities, and to their relative status within the local market hierarchy. Thus, rather than seeing districts compete to attract students (and per-pupil funding) from failing schools, we are instead witnessing a process of districts targeting more preferred students—effectively ignoring the potentially lucrative pool of dissatisfied families (and per-pupil funding) in failing districts. This suggests that districts are responding to a set of incentives quite different from the ones envisioned by reformers, so that although choice is opening up school options, better choices are less available for poor students and students of color.     

The geography of school choice in a city with growing inequality: the case of Vancouver

This analysis aims to measure the impact of school choice policy on secondary school students’ enrolment patterns within the social geography of Vancouver, an increasingly polarized global city. The rationale for the study is to examine the impact of ‘education market’ reforms on the socio-economic composition of schools in a Canadian context, where a social welfare commitment to educational equality is being replaced by market-oriented policies and increasing social inequality. Our study is guided by Bourdieu’s theory of site in considering whether growing inequality and polarization of wealth in a city are correlated with the ways families choose schools. We apply a geographical methodology (Geographic Information System) to delineate spatial patterns of choosing schools. Our analysis shows that those who opt out of the under-subscribed schools come from the neighborhoods with relatively higher capital than those who remain in their assigned schools. Also, those who opt into the over-subscribed schools in the affluent areas come from the neighborhoods with above-average levels of capital in Vancouver. Overall, we find that the spatial inequality in school choice generally follows the uneven distribution of capital/wealth across the city. The pattern of student mobility indicates an increasing level of segregation.     

4 Public choice perspectives on urban schools

Using public choice theory as a conceptual orientation, the authors argue that politics in urban school districts have differed from those in suburban school districts. Urban school politics have been characterized by relatively well‐organized interest groups and weak market controls, although politics in suburban school districts vary also, as a function of the strength of market controls. The strength of these interest groups in city school systems is reflected in school board politics, in the administrative structure and in district policies. Interest group liberalism in urban school districts may be lessening due to the changing educational needs of urban students and due to reformers’ efforts to give parents more educational choices. However, the success of market reforms depends on a number of conditions which will be a severe challenge to reformers.     

School Choice and the Polarization of Public Schools in A Global City: A Bourdieusian GIS Approach

ABSTRACT

Over the past three decades, urban sociologists have shed light on the intensifying social inequality between the wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods in global cities; yet limited research has been done to illuminate the relationships between urban polarization and school choice (i.e., where parents choose schools for their children). This study sociospatially examines the patterns of secondary school choice in the global city of Toronto to illuminate the relationship between urban polarization and school choice. In doing so, this study combines Pierre Bourdieu’s sociospatial theory with a geographic information systems (GIS) approach. Overall, we found that popular schools and schools with specialized choice programs tend to be located in high-status neighborhoods, defined as neighborhoods with residents in the top 20% of family income, home prices, education attainment, and representation from the dominant culture. We also show that mobile students who choose popular schools or highly sought-after specialized programs tend to come from advantaged neighborhoods. Meanwhile, local students who choose a regular school in their neighborhood tend to come from low-status neighborhoods. With a new interdisciplinary approach, this study contributes to a more spatialized understanding of how social inequality and polarization account for school choice.     

A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

Turbulence in St. Louis County: School Transfers,Opportunity Hoarding,and the Legacy of Brown

ABSTRACT

In the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional, and the process of school desegregation fell mostly to Black children. For over 35 years, Black families in St. Louis City have been using school transfers to cross boundaries in order to send their children to higher performing, predominately White schools in suburban St. Louis County in search of “a better education.” Relying on turbulence theory and Critical Race Theory (CRT), this study uses a media framing analysis to examine how newspaper articles described school transfers to the broader public between 2007 and 2017. Findings indicate that the articles described Black and White school districts as being affected by varying levels of turbulence and conflict. Findings also outline examples of opportunity hoarding by White schools and districts. The original focus of the Brown case was the lack of equitable resources in Black schools, and this study reignites questions about exclusion, privilege, and the choices made by Black families to receive educational equity.     

“Really Just Lip Service”: Talking About Diversity in Suburban Schools

Suburban school districts are in the midst of rapid racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversification, although the teaching force remains much more homogenous. This article examines how educators in increasingly more diverse suburban schools conceptualize diversity. Qualitative data comes from interviews of 40 teachers, 23 principals and assistant principals, and 16 other school staff in six suburban school districts across the country. Using critical discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1993), I identify three primary discourses: an aspirational commitment to preparing students for a diverse society; color-muteness and insistence on individuality; and a deficit perspective on students from diverse racial/ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In particular, educators perceived cultural deficits in students’ families and communities (Valencia, 2010). Finally, a small number of participants recognized structural forces that impeded the achievement of students of color. The discussion analyzes how such discourses threaten to reproduce educational inequality as suburban districts continue to diversify and concludes with recommendations for districts and schools.     

School Choice and the Politics of Parenthood: Exploring Parent Mobilization As a Catalyst for the Common Good

A substantial body of research has shown how white, middle-class parents in urban school districts use school choice as a tool to pursue educational advantages for their children. The purpose of this qualitative research was to examine the debate over neighborhood schools and school choice among a diverse group of parents in a gentrifying, yet highly diverse New York City neighborhood that I call “Prospect Point.” My central focus was studying a parent advocacy group that supports neighborhood schools. Findings show that about one third of families living in Prospect Point choose to send their children to charter or gifted and talented (G&T) schools located outside of the neighborhood. Given this outflow of parents and resources via school choice, most of the gentrifier parents in the sample who opted in to the local schools viewed their choice as a politically charged decision, and they credited the parent advocacy group as having influenced it. As a group, they rejected the consumer model of school choice, which they believed put the local schools at a disadvantage and was the norm for their racial/ethnic and socioeconomic demographic. Opt-in parents in this context recognized their privilege, and their children’s privilege, in the school-choice process and actively sought to diminish it through their choice to opt in. This research has important implications for the transformative role that parent mobilization can play in the future of diverse, high-quality public education and our democratic society.     

The private problem with public service: rural teachers in educational markets

Staffing rural and remote schools is an important policy issue for the public good. This paper examines the private issues it also poses for teachers with families working in these communities, as they seek to reconcile careers with educational choices for children. The paper first considers historical responses to staffing rural and remote schools in Australia, and the emergence of neoliberal policy encouraging marketisation of the education sector. We report on interviews about considerations motivating household mobility with 11 teachers across regional, rural and remote communities in Queensland. Like other middle-class parents, these teachers prioritised their children's educational opportunities over career opportunities. The analysis demonstrates how teachers in rural and remote communities constitute a special group of educational consumers with insider knowledge and unique dilemmas around school choice. Their heightened anxieties around school choice under neoliberal policy are shown to contribute to the public issue of staffing rural and remote schools.     

Children,School Choice and Social Differences

Research into school choice has focused primarily on parental perspectives. In contrast, this study directly explores children's experiences as they are going through the secondary school choice process in two inner London primary schools. While there were important commonalities in children's experience, in this paper we have concentrated on the differences. These, we argue, lay in (a) children's material and social circumstances, (b) children's individuality, and (c) the ways in which power is played out within families. However, despite both individual and family differences there remains a strong pattern of class-related orientations to choice. We also found that while the vast majority of children were actively involved in the choice process, the children's accounts highlight an important distinction between making and getting a choice. In this particular urban locale, there is less choice for black and white working-class boys than for other groups of children.     

Relationship Between Educational Resources and School Achievement: A Mixed Method Intra-District Analysis

This study examines the relationship between educational resources (fiscal, personnel and facilities) and school achievement within a large urban/suburban elementary school district. A sequential mixed methods approach reveals inequitable resource allocation trends and patterns between schools within a school district by producing different student outcomes. The educational resources positively correlated to higher school achievement are: higher teacher salaries, newer schools, more multi-purpose space per pupil and less portable classrooms. Without question, White students receive more of these resources than Latino students, low-income students and English Language learners. This study also conducts a multiple comparative case study analysis comparing between Title I and non-Title I schools, within Title I schools and within non-Title I schools. The study contains policy and practice implications to improve opportunity and school achievement in urban/suburban school districts.     

A different type of charter school: in prestige charters,a rise in cachet equals a decline in access

This paper seeks to elucidate a specific type of charter school. While much has been written about school choice and the expanding charter school segment, a growing and important number of charter schools do not fit in to the common understanding of these schools. Distinct from many of their counterparts, prestige charter schools have the following two features: elements which foster a reputation similar to that of elite private schools and a student population demographically distinct from local public district schools – whereby the prestige charters serve a disproportionate number of advantaged families. The prestige elements include: founding by advantaged community members; parental involvement; wait lists; popularity with advantaged professionals; high test scores; and niche themes. The authors will show through two in-depth case studies that prestige charter schools work hand-in-hand with gentrification in urban neighborhoods, and result in racial and class segregation and inequality. This paper examines how these charter schools struggle when a rise in prestige coincides with a decline in access for low-income students. The authors recommend that given the current system of school choice, prestige charter schools must use tools and mechanisms to maintain demographic diversity and educational equity which is in the best interest of all children.     

Examining Variation Within the Charter School Sector: Academic Achievement in Suburban,Urban, and Rural Charter Schools

ABSTRACT

To date, there is a paucity of research that examines differences between charter schools that operate in suburban and nonsuburban contexts. This article examines whether students in suburban charter schools perform better or worse than their counterparts in traditional public schools or students in urban charter schools. Boasting the largest and most diverse charter school population in the United States, California offers a fertile urban-suburban context for the study of geographically differentiated charter school impacts and, thus, serves as the focus of our study. The student achievement data (2009–2010, 2010–2011 and 2011–2012 school years) for this study come from the California Department of Education. Using propensity score matching and virtual control records, our findings show that suburban charter schools do not improve academic achievement relative to the matched comparison group of traditional public schools. Suburban charter schools (namely, charters in high-income areas) are largely ineffective and appear to leave their students’ achievement unchanged or diminished. This study adds to the existing literature by examining the effects of charter schools on the neighborhoods in which they operate. Methodologically, another important contribution of this study is that it supplements traditional selection criteria for suburban charters (NCES classification) with census-based neighborhood factors. Finally, this study provides evidence of the broader implications of school choice policies in a suburban setting.     

Seeking a ‘critical mass’: middle-class parents’ collective engagement in city public schooling

A growing body of literature has begun to explore the individual identities, motivations, and school choices of middle-class, typically white, parents who choose to reside in socioeconomically and racially mixed central city neighborhoods. Drawing on qualitative research in three US cities, we argue that a focus on middle-class parents’ collective engagement in schooling is particularly important in under-resourced urban contexts. In these environments, we show, middle-class parents’ use of social networks often extends beyond basic information-sharing about school quality to encompass a range of activities undertaken with other families ‘like them’ who have also chosen to enroll their children in an urban public school. We find that, in some instances, middle-class parents’ collective actions can benefit an entire class or school. Yet in other instances, their activation of social capital can contribute to processes of social reproduction in urban schooling by excluding or marginalizing low-income students and their families.     

White suburban schools' responses to low-income black children: Sources of successes and problems

This paper reports the results of a study of low-income black children who moved with their families into middle-income, white suburbs. Three hypotheses are tested: (1) Educational standards will be higher in the suburban schools than in the children's city schools. (2) Suburban schools and teachers will respond to these students with increased educational assistance mixed with some racial discrimination. (3) Students' grades and school satisfaction will not decline with the move to the suburban schools. Two kinds of research design are used: children's postmove suburban experiences are compared with retrospective reports of their premove experiences and also compared with experiences of a control group. Interviews with mothers and children permit quantitative and qualitative analyses. The findings support all three hypotheses and suggest new perspectives on the kinds of advantages and problems arising from residential integration.     

The Readability and Complexity of District-Provided School-Choice Information

Public school choice has become a common feature in American school districts. Any potential benefits that could be derived from these policies depend heavily on the ability of parents and students to make informed and educated decisions about their school options. We examined the readability and complexity of school-choice guides across a sample of large urban districts. These guides are intended to assist parents in learning about their child's options and to help them make informed decisions about schools. We found that none of the guides examined were written within the range considered appropriate for all adults to comprehend. In large urban districts where there are a large proportion of parents that have low levels of literacy, it is likely that many parents will have difficulty comprehending the information presented in the choice guides. We provide some simple steps that could be taken to improve readability of these guides.     

Market Forces and Strategic Adaptation: The Influence of Private Scholarships on Planning in Urban School Systems

While the current debate about the effects of vouchers focuses on the effects of private schools on achievement, it is also important to examine how the introduction of need-based scholarships influences change in school systems. This study uses a qualitative method to examine the influence of a privately funded scholarship program on strategic adaptations within urban public and private schools in a major metropolitan area. The study revealed that senior administrators in public and private schools rapidly adapted their strategies to contend with the new program: suburban public schools prevented scholarship students from enrolling; urban public schools increased choices for public school students; and private schools actively recruited students. However, the scholarships had little influence on the ways these administrators viewed school choice.     

Urban teachers’ perceptions of inclusion of migrant children in the Chinese educational institution: a comparative study

Recently China has been undergoing an unprecedented urbanisation process which has resulted in millions of rural families living in urban areas. As part of a study of Chinese migrant children's educational experiences, surveys and interviews were conducted with primary school teachers in a metropolitan city in East China. The objectives of this study were to describe teachers’ perceptions of migrant children's education in both migrant schools and in public schools, and to investigate differences in their beliefs between school types. Results found that urban teachers’ perceptions of educational inclusion of migrant students were slightly negative in general. However, teachers in public schools showed significantly more positive attitudes to inclusion of migrant students than migrant school teachers. In the light of these findings, the paper concludes with implications for practice and policy for education of migrant children in China.     

“The Environment”: Power,Pedagogy, and American Urban Schooling

Drawing on participant-observation research conducted in one core urban and one affluent suburban public school, the author argues that critical educational theorists should devote more attention to differential structural constraints on pedagogic choice. Teachers at the urban North End Community School make pedagogic choices that reinforce social hierarchies. They do so, in part, in order to enable their students to manage a series of risks and dangers associated with concentrated urban poverty. The evidence presented suggests that changing the role power plays in urban public schooling requires changing not only the choices individual teachers make, but also educational and other institutional constraints on pedagogic practice.