Parental Accountability, School Choice, and the Invisible Hand of the Market

• In Event: 67.054 - Sociological Contributions to School Choice Research: Evidence in a "Post-Truth" Era

Abstract

Objective and Framework
Accountability is a foundational concept for school choice reforms (Garn & Cobb, 2008). Yet little qualitative research has specifically examined stakeholders’ experiences with school choice in an increasingly complex “accountability” environment. Complicating matters further, individuals perceive accountability and school choice policies in many different ways, and their interpretations are patterned by both personal and collective concerns (e.g., Ball, Bowe, & Gewirtz, 1996; Jennings, 2010). Garn and Cobb (2008) identified four models of accountability embedded in the school choice movement: bureaucratic, performance, market, and professional. Yet, school choice policies and programs can also place pressure on parents that they experience as a form of accountability. I introduce the notion of parental accountability as an important extension to Garn and Cobb’s (2008) model. Existing sociological studies that add to our knowledge and theoretical understanding about some parent’ choice processes have contradictory findings, and these strong contributions to the literature highlight complicated aspects of middle- and upper-class parental choice (Altenhofen, Berends, & White, 2016; Lareau, 2014). In this paper, I analyze under-developed and problematic theoretical assumptions related to how parents will take part in facilitating the invisible hand of the education market. Next, I rely on empirical findings from ethnographic research over a two-year period in a metropolitan area of Arizona, a state with long-standing school choice policies and programs, to illustrate how parents in one district public school and in its surrounding community dealt with mounting social and cultural pressures that they faced as competition between both public and charter schools in their neighborhood increased.

Data and Methods
I analyzed 37 interviews conducted as a part of a larger ethnographic study with stakeholders, including parents, school leaders, administrators, and involved community members located at a district public school and at competing charter schools (Maxwell, 2013). Qualitative data analysis was conducted concurrently with data collection, through a reflexive and reflective process of reading and re-reading interviews transcribed “verbatim”, fieldnotes, and analytic memos and through multiple cycles of coding (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011; Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014).

Findings
Findings revealed an understudied phenomenon — that is, that parental accountability pressures are an important component to school choice that often trump other factors related to meaning- and decision-making. The pressures that are placed on parents in a mature education market are laden with both faulty assumptions and contradictions related to access, individual versus public priorities, and permanence of choice.

Significance
These findings from Arizona have implications for thinking through how parents understand and take part in school choice, and they problematize our understanding of parental accountability pressures for parents in marginalized groups. They also highlight the need for a theoretical model that defines parental accountability. It is imperative to understand parents’ experiences and actions in a variety of social class contexts, and the complicated details involved, or not involved, in school choice processes. As school choice policies and programs continue to grow, these types of findings are helpful for understanding factors driving education markets in settings across the U.S. and beyond.

Author

• Amanda U. Potterton, University of Kentucky