The Quality of Attention: How Low-Income Parents Assess High- and Low-Poverty Schools

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 16: Racial Inequities and School Choice: Exploring the Dynamics of Segregation, Perception, and Community

Abstract

Concentrated school poverty has negative consequences for children’s outcomes, but existing evidence on the extent to which low-income families are able to realize benefits of lower-poverty schools is mixed and it is unclear whether low-income parents perceive such schools as providing a sense of fit for their children’s needs. Longitudinal interviews with 43 parents in an experimental housing intervention reveal that families who moved from high- to low-poverty schools described improvements in instructional quality and peer culture as well as family-school relationships. These experiences led many parents to perceive low-poverty schools as providing the quality of attention, or a greater capacity on the part of schools to recognize and meet their children’s academic or behavioral needs. Significantly, some parents also described an expanded sense of their children’s potential following this school change, which resulted in their seeing their children in a new light. These findings expand our understanding of how concentrated disadvantage matters for schooling as well as parenting, shed light on how low-income parents assess school quality, and advance long-standing debates over policies aimed at reducing educational inequality.

Author

• Joseph Boselovic, College of William and Mary