Beyond the consumer: parents, privatization, and fundraising in US urban public schooling

Abstract

Given recent budgetary gaps in public education, many civic and educational leaders have relied upon private sources of funding for US public schools, including funds raised by parents. Yet parents’ role as economic actors in public education has been largely unexplored. Drawing from a qualitative study of parent engagement, fundraising, and school change in Chicago public schools, I explore the educational investments of a largely White group of middle- and upper middle-class parents and how they understand their collective engagement in relation to educational disparities. The findings show that parents were not only consumers through school choice, but also economic brokers of private capital via their fundraising efforts and producers of urban school change. Despite their stated commitments to public education and desire for diversity, most parents worked with and for a more selective public in their school change efforts, exacerbating resource disparities in the segregated urban district. The findings highlight the tensions and equity issues that arise when White, economically advantaged parents are positioned as consumers within neoliberal urban educational contexts while simultaneously called upon to support, sustain, and improve the public schools they choose for their children.

Keywords:

• Middle-class parents
• urban education
• social class
• privatization

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Michael Apple, Stacey Lee, Kathryn Moeller, Kate Phillippo, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Thanks also to the parents who offered their time and insights as participants in the study. Lastly, I wish to thank the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for funding the project.

Notes

1. For more detailed descriptions of education budget shortfalls in states and local districts, see Johnson, Oliff, and Williams (2011) and PEN (2011).

2. See Billingham and Kimelberg (2013, 2013b); Butler, Hamnett, and Ramsden (2013); Cucchiara and Horvat (2009); Reay, Crozier, and James (2011); Stillman (2012).

3. Local Education Funds (LEFs) garner public resources to support public schools and generally focus their efforts on district education reform initiatives and public engagement. Public Education Funds (PEFs), such as individual school and district foundations, typically solicit private dollars to supplement public education funds (Buhl and Rothman 2011; see also Addonizio 2000; Brunner and Imazeki 2005; Mertz and Frankel 1997; Zimmer et al. 2003). Researchers studying private funds for public schools generally rely upon annual reports from non-profit, tax-exempt LEFs and individual school and district foundations. Research using these reports has shown a growth in the number of organizations raising private funds for public schools since the early nineties as well as a growth in total revenues. One study found a 290% increase in the number of school foundations between 1991 and 2001, for example, with a 190% growth in revenues during that same period (Lampkin and Stern 2003).

4. The district has a complex student assignment policy, where parents can ‘choose’ from a number of options, including charter, neighborhood, magnet, and selective enrollment schools. Students residing in a neighborhood school’s attendance boundary receive priority in enrollment, whereas other school options assign students based upon a random lottery or exam scores. The enrollment process is marked by anxiety for many parents, and historically many parents with the economic means to do so (and who do not get their top-choice schools) have opted out and send their kids to private schools or move to suburban districts.

5. LSCs in CPS elementary schools are comprised of six parents, two community members, two teachers, one non-teacher staff member, and the school principal. LSC members are responsible for approving and monitoring how funds are used, selecting and evaluating school principals, and developing and overseeing school improvement plans (http://www.cps.edu/pages/Localschoolcouncils.aspx).

6. I draw here from other studies that distinguish upper middle-class parents from the more general middle-class, based upon the former’s educational credentials, occupational prestige, and the economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital they possess (Brantlinger 2003; Cucchiara 2013b).

7. Two sets of parents (a married couple and two parent leaders) were interviewed together as per their request. All names are pseudonyms.

8. The specific demographics of individual schools are omitted in order to protect the anonymity of participants.

9. I was first introduced to these educational researchers via a mutual professional contact, which may have influenced what they were willing to share with me. Perhaps as a result of their own research as well as their knowledge of mine, they (unlike other participants) used academic words like ‘privatization’ and ‘neoliberal.’ As both educational researchers and CPS parents participating in the school choice process, however, they spoke freely about the tensions they felt in trying to reconcile their ideological commitments (e.g. related to equity and collectivism) while also doing what they felt was best for their own children within a stratified district context.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison [grant number 120084].