Parents' Place-Based School Preferences Transcend Charter School Expansion in Central Brooklyn, New York

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Local Contexts, Conditions, and Concerns in School Choice

Abstract

New York charter school law favors charters located in neighborhoods where underperforming schools are concentrated; thus, New York City charter schools are disproportionately concentrated in central Brooklyn neighborhoods. This interpretive policy analysis of in-depth interviews with twenty Black parents engaged in elementary school choice reveals a disconnect between the intentions of charter school policy and parents’ preferences. Using a framework combining Ball and Vincent’s (1998) framing of parents’ engagement in school choice as acquisition of objectified cultural capital, Bell’s (2007; 2009) framing of geographic preferences, and Sharkey’s (2013) framing of neighborhoods as sites of transmission of racial inequality for Black Americans, this analysis demonstrates that parents have strong place-based preferences that transcend proliferation of charter schools in their neighborhoods.

Author

• Shannon Nicole Allen, University of Colorado - Denver