Choosing Predominantly Black Magnet Schools: The Importance of School Racial Composition in Parental Decision-Making

ABSTRACT

Does school racial composition influence where parents choose to send their children to school? This paper contributes to the literature on school racial composition and parental choice by examining the reasons parents give for enrolling their children in predominantly Black magnet schools. We use data from a survey of parental school decision-making that was administered in one countywide, Southeastern school district in the 2002–03 school year. The survey data was collected a few years after the district’s release from its court desegregation order as Black students comprised an increasing share of magnet school enrollments. As such, we are able to assess parental decision-making at a critical time point in which school racial composition may have been an especially prevalent factor in where parents were choosing to enroll their children. We find that parents of White children only mentioned school academic quality in their discussions of magnet school choice. In contrast, parents of Black children mentioned that the joint combination of academic quality and racial composition of magnet schools was important in their school selection process. Specifically, Black parents expressed that the predominantly Black and high-achieving school environment of magnet schools provided their child with the opportunity to succeed academically among students of a similar racial background while experiencing less race-based discrimination and comparisons.

KEYWORDS:

• School choice
• parent decision-making
• school racial composition
• magnet schools
• predominantly Black schools

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We do not provide the specific name of the school district due to a confidentiality agreement.

2. The use of busing to achieve school desegregation was one of the most controversial civil rights issues and was not always successful. For a more in-depth overview of the history of busing and its effectiveness, see Delmont (2016) or Pride and Woodward (1995).

3. The focus of this paper is parental choice of and student enrollment in predominantly Black magnet schools. As such, our analysis does not focus on the families that applied to magnet schools but chose not to enroll their children. It is interesting to note, however, that some of the White families who were accepted to magnet schools but did not ultimately enroll their children mentioned that the racial composition of magnet schools influenced their decisions. Specifically, some White parents explicitly stated that they chose to not enroll their child in a magnet school due to Black students comprising the majority share of magnet school enrollments post-desegregation. The decision of these White families to opt away from predominantly Black school contexts aligns with the findings of other school choice studies mentioned in the literature review section of this manuscript (Cucchiara, 2013; Roda & Wells, 2013; Smrekar, 2009).

4. We examine changes in magnet school racial composition over time through comparing Black students’ share of magnet school enrollments over time. In doing so, we are not attempting to examine or measure changes in school segregation over time, as using absolute measures to compare segregation over time can be misleading due to not accounting for demographic compositional changes in the student population. For an overview of the issues associated with measuring school segregation over time using absolute measures, see Kisida (2019).

5. In our multivariate analyses, missing data were managed through multiple imputation procedures. Sampling weights were also used to improve the accuracy of our measurements in terms of providing accurate population estimates.

6. In contrast to our findings in the full sample and the sub-sample of Black families, choosers and non-choosers did not significantly differ in their perceptions of their child’s academic performance in the sub-sample of White families.