The increasing public demand to hold schools accountable for their effects on student outcomes lends urgency to the task of clarifying statistical issues pertaining to studies of school effects. Th...

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The Estimation of School Effects

In this article, Jennifer Jellison Holme explores how parents who can afford to buy homes in areas known “for the schools” approach school choice in an effort to illuminate how the “unofficial” choice market works. Using qualitative methods, Holme finds that the beliefs that inform the choices of such parents are mediated by status ideologies that emphasize race and class. She concludes that school choice policies alone will not level the playing field for lower-status parents, as choice advocates often suggest. Suzanne Holland and I were scheduled to meet on a warm summer morning at a Starbucks coffee shop located in a shopping center near her suburban home. 1 I arrived early, and waited at a patio table shaded by a large green umbrella before Suzanne, a tall blond White woman in her early forties, pulled up in her sport utility vehicle. I introduced myself, and after we got our coffees we sat down to talk about why Suzanne had moved to the community of Rancho Vista, and what role schools had played in that decision. Before she and her husband moved to Rancho Vista, Suzanne informed me, they had lived for many years in a large home in a predominately White, upper-middle-class neighborhood. This neighborhood, however, was located within a large urban school district that had, according to Suzanne’s friends and acquaintances, low-quality public schools. In fact, these schools were considered of such poor quality that almost everyone Suzanne knew either sent their children to private schools or simply moved out of the area to one considered to be in a better school district. As the eldest of their three chil

Buying Homes, Buying Schools: School Choice and the Social Construction of School Quality.

Parental choice of school is one of the main platforms of government education policy and is the centre piece of the Parents Charter. But sociological understanding of choice and choice-making is woefully underdeveloped. This paper draws on an ESRC study of market forces in education to explore social class variations in choice of school in one specific locality. The complexity of choice-making is portrayed using data from interviews with parents and it is argued that middle-class parents are taking full advantage of ‘the market’ to sustain or re-assert their class advantages.

Circuits of schooling: A sociological exploration of parental choice of school in social class contexts

Chapter 1 Marking out the middle classes in a global city Chapter 2 Gentrification: a middle-cass coping strategy? Chapter 3 Spatial and strategic middle-class activity in the City Chapter 4 Mapping the neighbourhoods Chapter 5 A Class in and for itself? Chapter 6 Home and household Chapter 7 Children, schooling and social reproduction Chapter 8 Making sense of 21st century gentrification Chapter 9 Conclusions Bibliography

London Calling: The Middle Classes and the Remaking of Inner London

Parental choice is one of the keystones of current education policy in the UK. A combination of open enrolment, per‐capita funding and deregulated admission procedures is encouraging competition between schools for student enrolments (at least in areas where there are surplus places). Parents are encouraged to see themselves as consumers of education, and ‘good parenting’ is defined, at least in part, in relation to the ‘responsibilities’ of choice (The Parents Charter, Department of Education 1992). Within education policy choice is taken to be both neutral and individualistic. In this paper, we attempt to challenge that neutrality and to argue that choice in education is systematically related to social class differences and the reproduction of class inequalities.

School choice, social class and distinction: the realization of social advantage in education

Alert and inert clients: The Scottish experience of parental choice of schools

Parental Choice in Scotland.

This study examines the reasons a sample of Scottish parents gave for rejecting their designated secondary school and choosing a different one. A consistent theme in the findings is the importance of parental socio‐economic status (SES). It was related to the reasons for rejecting the local school and for selecting a different school, and to the degree of importance accorded different sources of information. Reasons pertaining to social and reputational factors and to disciplinary climate were the dominant themes for both rejection and selection of secondary schools. The academic quality of the school was of lesser importance. The results suggest that an educational marketplace that parallels the free‐market model works only for a limited subgroup of the population that is already advantaged in the present educational system.

Frank H. Echols

Papers

Alert and inert clients: The Scottish experience of parental choice of schools

Parental Choice in Scotland.

Reasons for school choice in Scotland