Untouchable Carrots: Marketing School Choice and Realities in Hartford's Inter-district Magnet Program

• In Event: 244 - Regular Session. Inequality and Privilege in Education

Abstract

Hartford, Connecticut, a national model for school desegregation, has spent the last decade dramatically increasing the number of its students who attend racially diverse schools. Yet a number of Hartford residents are dissatisfied with the marketing and implementation of these schools. My study, the first to examine an inter-district program’s marketing efforts, finds an unintended consequence of this education reform is that Hartford’s predominantly minority parents experience a disconnect between the marketed promise of choice and their lived reality. Based on an 18-month qualitative study in Hartford involving observations at school choice events, community forums and interviews with local policy makers and parents at two urban public magnet schools, the study examines both the messaging of school choice and how it is interpreted by Hartford residents. While many Hartford families attempt to get into magnet schools, they object to feeling unequal in a system designed to recruit white suburban families to act as integrators. Other Hartford families search for alternatives to desegregated schools or opt out of the magnet system entirely.

Author

• Mira Catherine Debs, Yale University