Choosing Diversity: White Parents, Demographic Change, and Suburban Public Schools

• In Event: 60.057 - Exploring the Promise and Peril of Urban and Suburban School "Choice" Within and Across Segregated Spaces

Abstract

Social scientists have documented a long history of resistance on the part of white, non-Hispanic parents to enrolling their children in racially diverse public schools. Decades of “white flight” and other challenges to desegregation policies have contributed to high levels of school segregation throughout the 20th Century (Mickelson, 2008; Orfield, 2001, Bernstein, McNichol, & Lyons, 2006). In the current education policy landscape, desegregation policies of the mid-20th century are largely a thing of the past, and policy emphasis is on providing greater school choice to parents regardless of its segregative effects. Thus, as we strive toward creating and sustaining racially diverse public schools, we must shift our attention to the conditions that lead parents to actively choose predominantly non-white and/or racially diverse public schools across different contexts. This paper, specifically, examines one such case in which historical patterns of white flight and segregation in a suburban school district have been interrupted.

While the problematic cycle of school segregation persists, a small but growing body of research suggests that at least a subset of today’s white parents are seeking more culturally diverse environments for their children (Powell, 2002; Lacireno-Paquet & Brantley, 2012; Roda and Wells, 2013; Stillman, 2012). However, at the same time, immense structural and social barriers make it challenging for parents to balance their desire for diversity with other considerations such as school outcome measures, reputation, and proximity to home or work.

Drawing on valuable theoretical perspectives including racial preference and bias literature (Bobo and Charles, 2009; Quandango, 1994), and color-blindness (Bonilla-Silva, 2009; Carter, 2009), this study explores the complicated process of school choice in an era of increasing diversity, post-racialism, and a competitive and stressful educational landscape focused on narrow measures of school quality. Through observations and qualitative interviews, I explore the decision-making processes of middle-class white parents in a suburban community in the New York metropolitan area, whose children have been assigned to a predominantly non-white school. Despite the school’s relatively negative reputation and the ample opportunity that these parents have to flee this school, as many do each year, a small but steady percentage (about 15% in 2012) remain.

Specific questions addressed in this research include: How do white parents explain their decisions to send their child(ren) to a majority non-white school? What role does racial diversity play in their decision to send their child(ren) to this school? How do these parents make sense of broad structural issues that challenge diversity in public schools? How do parents describe their experiences (and those of their children) with regards to racial/ethnic diversity at this predominantly non-white school, as compared to those of friends/family at predominantly white schools? Initial interviews with parents, as well as several school leaders, suggest that while nearly 100 white families flee the increasingly non-white school each year using the district’s waiver policy, those who stay do so in part because they consider cross-cultural, heterogeneous educational experiences to be crucial, particularly in an era of rapidly changing demographics.

Author

• Lauren Fox, Teachers College, Columbia University