Unintended Harm: How School Choice Policies Concentrate Violence in Children’s Daily Lives

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 11. Issues in School Choice

Abstract

How does experiencing violence at both home and school affect how children respond to danger? Moreover, what role do school choice policies play in reproducing the racial and spatial concentration of violence that students face in their daily lives? Drawn from 74 interviews with students from four neighborhood public high schools and one magnet public high school in Philadelphia, my study shows that schools play a critical role in moderating children’s behavioral responses to violence. In tiered school choice systems like Philadelphia—where access to the best public schools depends on superior academic achievements, clean disciplinary records, and family resources to help children navigate and gain admission—schools choose students, not the other way around. Children who attend local schools face greater exposure to violence because school choice concentrates student misconduct at these schools, thus making violence more difficult for school staff to manage. When schools replicate the violent conditions of neighborhoods and fail to safeguard children’s wellbeing, they increase students’ fear of getting hurt and/or the likelihood that students will attempt to thwart danger via street-oriented fighting behaviors that have proven effective within their home areas. These students essentially receive a higher dosage of violence than their residential peers who go to safe magnet schools because local schools reinforce and magnify the dangerous conditions they already face at home.

Author

• Trinh Tran, Middlebury College