School choice: policy, effects, and implementation

School Choice & the Social Construction of School Quality

In this article, Jennifer J. Holme explores how parents, who re-locate their homes for getting access to "higher quality" schools for their children, approach their choice of school. The author also seeks to understand the beliefs of such parents about what constitutes a "good and a "bad" school. Her research consists of interviews with forty-two selected parents who had used their financial resources to buy homes in school districts where they thought the best schools were located. The research reveals that the decisions of most parents in selecting or rejecting schools for their children are not based on knowledgeable information about the quality of schools and their choice is almost always based on information gathered from other parents in their social networks consisting of "high status," "high income" parents. The author concludes from her research that the parents give more credence to the opinion of their fellow high status parents about schools rather than to solid information about the quality of curriculum and instruction in the schools.

A main point of the article is that most "high status" parents (predominantly white, falling in the middle to high-income bracket) in the United States believe that schools that cater to white students of affluent background are invariably better than schools that have a high proportion of colored and/or low-income students. The attitude not only reflects the fact that most people feel comfortable among people of similar disposition ("birds of a feather flock together"), it is also indicative of the deep-rooted racial and class bias in the American society. The research further reveals that individuals may subscribe to a 'liberal' philosophy as long as it relates to a nebulous, theoretical concept but revert to more selfish attitudes when it comes to more personal matters.