Schools’ Choice: Delving into an Under-examined Sub-sector of American Public Schools

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

Abstract

Exemplified by the charter school movement, “school choice” has typically referred only to the ability of students and parents to choose their schools. Accordingly, research on school choice in the U.S. has focused heavily on investigating the veracity of the claim that schools that “compete” for students produce better outcomes. This overlooks the set of public schools in which students also have to compete for entrance by meeting academic standards. I refer to this subset of public K-12 schools that exercise reciprocal choice by selecting their students using academic criteria as Selective Enrollment Public Schools (SEPSs). These institutions constitute an under-studied sub-sector of public schools, and may have important implications for school choice policy and integration in the United States. This paper presents a first look at important descriptive questions: (1) how prevalent are SEPSs and (2) who do they serve? No comprehensive list of SEPSs exists. Thus, to answer these questions, I compile my own list using an innovative web-scraping technique. I identify 333 schools across 90 districts and present preliminary analyses to test whether SEPSs expand opportunities for “traditional” public school students in large districts, or serve as educational subsidies for the well-off. I find that white students are over-represented in SEPS, but are actually more under-represented at the district level where SEPSs exist. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

Author

• Veronique Irwin, University of California-Berkeley