Black Mothers' School Selection Decision-Making Processes: Making Educational Decisions to Protect and Prepare

• In Event: Theorizing From the Intersections: Understanding Education Policies and Practices Through Critical Feminist Theories

Abstract

The fifth panelist draws on in-depth interview data with low-and-middle-income Black mothers to explore the factors influencing their school-selection decision-making processes within a school choice context. As school choice policies continue to become more prevalent nationally and internationally, educational scholars are interested in understanding how parents make school selection decisions. Research shows that mothers and maternal caregivers, in particular, play a crucial role in academic decision-making processes related to school selection (Davies & Aurini, 2011). However, there is limited research explicitly examining Black mothers' criteria when selecting schools for their children.
This paper discusses the unique experiences of five Black mothers who use private school vouchers or pay tuition for their children, ages 5-11 years old, to attend a private school. While many scholars critically examine various aspects of school choice policies (Buras, 2012; Scott, 2011a, 2011b, 20011c, 2013; Holme, 2002; Jabbar, 2017; Jennings, 2010; Pedroni, 2007; Wells, Slayton & Scott, 2002; Vincent, 2017; Wilkins, 2011), the scope of this paper is to examine how Black mothers' positionality and experiences with institutional racism inform the criteria they use when choosing schools for their elementary-aged children within a school choice context.
Drawing on Camille Wilson Cooper’s (2005) positioned choice as a lens to analyze how Black mother’s positionality contributes to their school-selection processes, this study demonstrates how Black mother's positionality and experiences with institutional racism inform their decisions when choosing schools for their children.
Interlocking structures of race, gender, and class profoundly shape how Black mothers and other racialized mothers, including Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian American mothers, make school selection decisions nationally and internationally (Bhopal, 2014; Collins, 1994; Cooper, 2005; Dow, 2016; Gillborn, 2018; Vincent, 2017). This paper shows that mothers with multiple marginalized identities have additional factors to consider when selecting their children's schools. In addition to demonstrating the ways race and gender inform motherhood, this study aims to highlight the heterogeneity and multiplicity within and between Black mothers.
Findings show how Black mothers prioritized factors that may protect their children from discrimination and prepare them for racist practices embedded in American institutions. Specifically, this paper examines how Black mothers use habitus and positioned choice to prioritize ethnically and linguistically diverse learning environments, educators who 'care' about their children and family, and ensuring their children have ‘good experiences’ with teachers and peers. This paper challenges monolithic notions of motherhood and contrast market-oriented policy discourses describing Black mothers as self-interested consumers. Black mothers’ experiences with racist institutions alongside their desire to protect and prepare their children in a racist society contributed to the factors Black mothers in this study prioritized when selecting schools. The findings are of importance to policy makers, administrators, and educators and underscore the importance of examining how the persistence of racist and oppressive structures converge to shape racialized mothers' school selection decision-making processes.

Author

• Tarsha I. Herelle, Johns Hopkins University