Doing Identity Work and Risky Endeavors? A Qualitative Research Synthesis of Predominantly White, Middle-Class Parents’ Decision Making in the Context of Urban School Choice

Abstract

The inversion hypothesis popularized by Ehrenhalt posits that recent urban migration trends in the United States constitute a reversal of the late 20th-century model of middle-class White flight to the suburbs and an urban core inhabited by a mostly working-class, minority population. The hypothesized blurring of the urban–suburban divide has led to calls that policymakers must seize the opportunity to foster racially and economically diverse urban schools before the inversion process is complete with the assumption that doing so will lead to more equitable educational opportunities. The aim of this study is to gain insight into the possibility of fostering racially and economically integrated urban schools in the context of school choice through a qualitative research synthesis of the decision making processes of predominantly White, middle-class families in the urban core as they make school choices. Findings from this research indicate that the decision making of parents in the studies sampled for this synthesis are bound up with their identity work as “city people”; that parents who go “against the grain” in choosing an urban public school perceive that choice to be a risky decision; and that those risks are mitigated by their access to cultural, social, and economic capital.

Parental Accountability, School Choice, and the Invisible Hand of the Market

“…Existing sociological studies that add to our knowledge and theoretical understanding about parents’ choice processes highlight complicated aspects of middle- and upper-class parental choice (e.g., Altenhofen, Berends, & White, 2016; Berends, 2015; Lareau, 2014). An important body of school choice research examines parents’ roles in school choice (e.g., Ball et al, 1996; Ball & Vincent, 1998; Bell, 2009; Ellison & Aloe, 2019; Holme, 2002; Horvat, 2012; Lareau, Evans, & Yee, 2016; Rhodes & DeLuca, 2014). Elsewhere, researchers have examined how parents engage (or not) in choosing schools.…”

Data-Informed Educational Decision Making to Improve Teaching and Learning Outcomes of EFL

“…The case for the use of IT in learning English as a foreign language has been made by highlighting the power of technology in eliminating traditional barriers to education, such as geographical and time differences. Researchers have also pointed out that the use of IT tools in learning English as a foreign language is also rooted in its ability to eliminate spatial and temporal challenges to learning (Ellison & Aloe, 2019;Zhang et al, 2016). Other researchers have pointed out that the use of IT in EFL learning has helped to provide students with an increased array of language resources needed to communicate more effectively with their teacher and colleagues (Hartong, 2016;Williamson, 2016aWilliamson, , 2016bSouto-Otero & Beneito-Montagut, 2016).…”

Choice, Opportunity Hoarding, and the Social Construction of School Quality

“…Scholars have documented the ways that the markets fail to function in school choice schemes -either because not all families have equal access to information (Doughtery et. al., 2010;Teske, Fitzpatrick, & Kaplan 2007), or because social, cultural, economic, and/or geographic constraints limit families' ability to make use of that information (Bell, 2009;James 2014), or because enacted individual preferences lead to unequal access (Ellison & Aloe, 2017;Roda & Wells, 2013;Stulberg, 2004;Whitehurst 2017). Competitive school admissions, as is the case in my study, is an extreme example of a constraint that greatly limits a "free market" model, since popular schools are allowed to choose students, rather than the other way around (Ball, et.…”