Choice, Opportunity Hoarding, and the Social Construction of School Quality

• In Event: 34.095 - MTCC Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: 34.095-11 - The Politics of Charters, Choice, and Change: Implications for Inequality and Opportunity

Abstract

This study examines how institutional policies and practices within a diverse school district interact with parental actions to reproduce inequalities. After interviewing parents at multiple points in a school “choice” process that requires families to rank middle school preferences while allowing schools to select or “screen” student applicants based on assorted criteria, I found that although existing policies and practices clearly discriminated against Black, Latino, and poor students, “opportunity hoarding” by white and affluent parents was somewhat mediated by market forces and the opaque nature of the school admissions process. Despite these mediating factors, however, poor students, especially new immigrants, were much more likely than their peers to be assigned a school with a high concentration of students in poverty.

Author

• Judith R. Kafka, Baruch College - CUNY