Stayers and Leavers: Parental Decision Making in a Volatile School Choice Environment

• In Event: 77.057 - MTCC Roundtable Session 35
  In Roundtable Session: 77.057-3 - Conscious Consumers? Parent Perceptions of Choice Across Race, Class, and Gender

Abstract

Drawing from the experiences of parents participating in an open enrollment school choice system, this study examines how parents respond to the shifting demographics of students in schools by making choices to either stay or exit while maintaining their residential status. Data include interviews of 16 parent participants, half of whom have kept their children enrolled in schools with large enrollments of nonresident children, and half of whom have used school choice to leave the district. Findings suggest that parental decision-making is shaped by the mixed rationalities involved in considering the landscape of choices from unique individual positions, ultimately leading some parents to move their children from resident schools in ways that may exacerbate school segregation, white flight, and gentrification.

Authors

• Kate Rollert French, Wayne State University

• Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Wayne State University

• Ben Pogodzinski, Wayne State University