Structural constraints and the school choice strategies of black American middle-class parents

Abstract

While many school choice studies focus on individual parents’ preferences, we simultaneously address the structural context within which families make decisions and the strategies they develop in response. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 24 Black middle-class parents of young children, we demonstrate that they sought well-funded, academically rigorous schools populated by racially diverse middle-class students. Using administrative data, we then show that such schools are exceptionally rare, reflecting the structural realities of US society. To manage the ensuing dilemma, the parents implemented one of two school-selection strategies: ‘assiduous rationality’, which entailed collecting information to make a maximally informed decision, and ‘trusting a close tie’, which entailed identifying a network member who had been successful, and following their lead. Regardless of their strategy, the parents exhibited significant institutional mistrust and anxiety. Our results point to the constraint exercised by social structures, which can thwart parental goal realization regardless of class resources.

Keywords:

• Race
• school choice
• Black middle class
• trust

Acknowledgements

Research was supported by The Spencer Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania. Rita Harvey, Mary Herring, Diana Khuu, Vanessa Lopes Munoz, and Leigh McCormack provided valuable research assistance. We are grateful to Alexander Adames, Ashleigh Cartwright, Maia Cucchiara, and Judith Levine for helpful comments. Earlier versions were presented at the Eastern Sociological Society, 2014; the conference ‘Penser les Inégalités dans l’Enfance’, Sorbonne, Paris, 2019; and the American Sociological Association, 2020. All errors are the responsibility of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We classify schools by math proficiency for convenience; results are similar if we use English language proficiency, except in terms of the representation of Asian students.

2 Of course, there were other indicators of school quality that parents could have considered, including facilities, financial resources, teachers’ experience, curricular offerings, and so forth. See, among others, Bryk (2010) and Duncan and Murnane (2014).

3 But Cucchiara (2013b) finds that white parents in her study, who sent their children to a ­relatively high-poverty school, remained vigilant.

4 See also Rollock et al. (2014), Posey-Maddox (2017), and Lewis-McCoy (2014).