No One Was Marketing To Us: Cultural Coding, School Choice and Parent Involvement

• In Event: 060 - Regular Session. School Choice and Educational Inequality

Abstract

Numerous scholars have concluded that what parents want from schools varies by social class and racial background, but such studies have simplistically considered how parents evaluate what makes a good school, particularly in light of complex school choice systems that offer an increasing range of education pedagogies. How schools culturally code and market education and how parents decode these meanings play a determining role in how parents choose schools and get involved (or not) inside the school. Parents’ attitudes toward school can change significantly after their children enroll, but the public school choice process doesn’t offer much flexibility to switch if parents continue to feel their choice is misaligned with their priorities. My research focuses on one specific school choice: public Montessori schools that make up the largest alternative pedagogy in the public school system and their reception by minority parents. Based on an 18-month qualitative study of two public Montessori magnet schools, interviews with 75 parents, staff and policy makers, as well as an original data set of 482 American public Montessori schools, I argue that there are two primary processes where cultural coding impacts parent choice and involvement: the cultural coding of schools in ways that appeal to particular social groups, and home-school policies that aim to create alliances between parents and school but instead alienate some families. This paper demonstrates the important role of institutionally articulated cultural codes in creating unequal school outcomes, particularly in the context of “boutique” school choices.

Author

• Mira Catherine Debs, Yale University