When Schools Choose: Evaluation and Educational Inequality

ABSTRACT

Educators evaluate students for admission in many oversubscribed and selective public schools. Yet, previous studies have focused on families as school choosers. Little is known about the role that educators play in determining whether students are admitted to sought-after schools in stratified education systems. Through an ethnography of the admissions process, this study examines the evaluation of applicants at an oversubscribed school. The admissions process results in the sorting of students into schools that vary on important measures, including graduation and college enrollment rates. The study reveals that school-level educators treated the evaluation process as an opportunity to increase the status of the school. They did this, in part, by selecting students who activated dominant cultural capital. The school district endeavored to make selective schools more widely accessible; however, a lack of district oversight allowed the school to instead pursue its own status-oriented goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Sociology of education
• Inequality
• Urban sociology
• Evaluation
• School choice
• Cultural capital

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge the National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant for their financial support of this research. I thank Annette Lareau, Jessica McCrory Calarco, Maia Cucchiara, Emily Hannum, Elaine Allard, Rachel Fish, Angela Frederick, Jennifer Pearson, Laura Mauldin, Carrie Shandra, and Dara Shifrer for their helpful comments on various drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. These terms were changed to maintain confidentiality.

2. Ms. Pruitt’s reference to “these schools” suggests a hierarchy among middle and K-8 schools, in which some schools were incapable of preparing students for Allegiance academics.

3. I saw no evidence that the essays were ever read. Still, the essay was a required part of the application.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Social and Economic Sciences.

Notes on contributors

Shani Evans

Shani Adia Evans teaches Sociology and Black Studies at Swarthmore College. Her research focuses on both the mechanisms and experiences of race and class inequality in urban schools and neighborhoods. She is currently working on a project about Black experiences with gentrification in Portland, Oregon.