High-Stakes Choosing: How Parents Navigate Chicago Public Schools

• In Event: Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools: Mechanisms in the Reproduction of Educational Inequality

Abstract

Contemporary school reform focuses on choice and the personal initiative of parents/students, who must choose from the array of resources available from the state. This paper presents the voices of African American parents navigating this school choice landscape. The data come from surveys and interviews with 77 African American parents of teenagers entering two predominately black Chicago public high schools, one a very low-performing neighborhood high school with automatic enrollment for students in the attendance area (“Neighborhood High”), and the other a charter school that has shown positive results and conducts admissions through a city-wide lottery (“Charter High”). After presenting major themes that are common across all of the interviews – namely that all parents have to make sense of the school landscape, want to educate and protect their children, are juggling multiple responsibilities, are choosing with limited information, and must make the best of the outcome – we then let parents speak for themselves in extended first-person testimonies of three Neighborhood High parents and one Charter High parent. The narratives elucidate key findings about informational deficits and communication breakdowns that characterize these parents’ experiences. We conclude with a challenge to the school choice model as an effective way to attain educational equity.

Authors

• Mary Pattillo, Northwestern University

• Lori Ann Delale-O'Connor, University of Pittsburgh

• Felicia Butts, Little Angels Family Learning Center