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

Session Type: Invited Session

Abstract

This session creates a conversation among researchers from diverse specialties within education and the social sciences, including racial and socioeconomic segregation, education inequality, and school choice. We seek to provide a better understanding of how, and to what extent, school and housing choices are connected, and the consequences these connections have for racial and socioeconomic school and residential segregation. We contend that residential segregation cannot be understood without a concomitant understanding of how people make choices about schools, and that school segregation, correlatively, cannot be understood without a concomitant understanding of how people make choices about homes. In recent decades, black-white segregation has decreased modestly, economic inequality has grown in significance, and school choice programs have become more prominent. Yet, we have limited understanding of the actual ways in which parents do, and do not, use available information to guide school choice decisions.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Kimberly A. Goyette, Temple University

Papers

• Changes in Segregation by Race and Class: The Implications for Schools - Paul A. Jargowsky, Rutgers University - Camden

• High-Stakes Choosing: How Parents Navigate Chicago Public Schools - Mary Pattillo, Northwestern University; Lori Ann Delale-O'Connor, University of Pittsburgh; Felicia Butts, Little Angels Family Learning Center

• Schools, Housing, and the Reproduction of Inequality - Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania

• School Choice in an Urban Setting: Sources of Information - Elliot B. Weininger, College at Brockport - SUNY

Discussant

• Sean F. Reardon, Stanford University