Racialized Understandings, Racialized Responses: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Central Office School Choice Competition Strategies

• In Event: Tensions and Complexities: How Policy Actors Navigate, Reproduce, and/or Disrupt Inequities in U.S. School Choice Contexts

Abstract

This sequential explanatory mixed-methods study explores the relationship between school choice and neighborhood school diversity. The quantitative phase uses seven years of administrative data from Pennsylvania to suggest that participation in five public school choice programs slightly exacerbates segregation in urban neighborhood schools. The qualitative phase extends quantitative findings with a comparative case study of two urban school districts, Albertville and Bedford, where leaders’ differing racialized perceptions of school choice systems produced differing competition strategies. Bedford centered White, higher income families and allowed internal opportunity gaps to persist, whereas Albertville sought to compete by increasing equity. These cases illustrate that while local school choice practices can shape school diversity, leaders’ perceptions are critical determinants of whether numeric diversity produces equity.

Author

• Sophia Seifert, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc
  Presenting Author