WHITE PARENTS, DIVERSITY AND SCHOOL
CHOICE POLICIES:
WHERE GOOD INTENTIONS, ANXIETY AND
PRIVILEGE COLLIDE
Amy Stuart Wells
Teachers College, Columbia University
Allison Roda
Teachers College, Columbia University
Prepared for School Choice and School Improvement:
Research in State, District and Community Contexts
Vanderbilt University, October 25-27, 2009
This paper is supported by the National Center on School Choice, which is funded by a
grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES)
(R305A040043). All opinions expressed in this paper represent those of the authors and
not necessarily the institutions with which they are affiliated or the U.S. Department of
Education. All errors in this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors. Do not cite
or circulate without author’s permission. For more information, please visit the Center
website at www.vanderbilt.edu/schoolchoice/.
A growing body of research has documented consistent patterns of racial/ethnic segregation that
emerge when school choice policies are framed in a free market, laissez-faire and “colorblind” manner
(see Mickelson, et. al., 2008; Wells and Roda, 2008). In other words, school choice policies such as
charter schools, vouchers and open enrollment plans, which are not explicitly designed to promote racial
integration and school diversity, generally manage to do the opposite – namely, lead to greater
stratification and separation of students by race and ethnicity across schools. This process of choicebased racial segregation is disconcerting in a society with an increasingly diverse school-age population
(now only 56 percent white, non-Hispanic) and a growing number of parents who say they want their
children to attend racially diverse schools. Meanwhile, the number of students participating in these
more market-based school choice plans is on the rise, as is racial/ethnic segregation in K-12 education.
In looking for explanations for the segregative effects of school choice policies such as charter
schools some researchers have focused on how parents make school choices and the impact of these
choices on racial segregation (see Lankford and Wyckoff, 2000; Sinkkink and Emerson, 2007; Weiher and
Tedin, 2002; Glazerman, 1998; Kisida, et. al. , 2008). Others have considered how the policies
themselves constrain the choices parents make. For instance, some researchers have argued that free
market choice plans’ lacking diversity goals, racial quotas or guidelines, outreach to different
communities, and transportation, etc., constrain the choices that parents, particularly low-income
parents, make and thus lead to more and not less stratification (see Wells, 1993; Wells and Holme, 2008;
Wells and Roda, 2008).
Furthermore, we do have some understanding from the research of how differences in parental
privilege lead to meaningful distinctions in terms of student access to the most coveted schools of
choice and then, in turn, serve to perpetuate sharp distinctions across schools related to student
opportunities, as advantaged students become more concentrated in certain sites and not others
(Holme, 2002; Johnson and Shapiro, 2005). We also know anecdotally and empirically that this process
1
of sorting leads to self-fulfilling prophecies of “good” and “bad” schools, as the schools or programs that
enroll the most privileged students are seen as better, which in turn perpetuates separateness and
inequality across schools of choice and between choice schools and regular public schools (see Wells, et.
al., 2009).
Yet there is virtually no research that attempts to understand the intricate relationship between
how parents make sense of school choices, the policies that shape their choice options, and the larger
structures of inequality – e.g. racial and socio-economic segregation and unequal educational
opportunities -- that their choices often help reinforce, maintain and legitimize. For instance, few
researchers situate individual parents, who come to the school choice process with different levels of
privilege, power and resources, and make decisions (or not) within the confines of the choice policies
and options available in their local contexts.
Furthermore, because the most privileged parents in any given context – generally white parents
with the most wealth, education and resources – are more likely to get their children into the higheststatus and most exclusive schools of choice, we need to examine how these parents in particular make
decisions about which schools are desirable. Their desires and choices, we argue, will drive the school
choice system by defining which schools are the “best” in part because of their association with these
high-status families. In this way, schools and parents’ choices among them reflect the inequality and
stratification of the larger society. Prior research suggests that the only way to derail this process, which
leads to greater racial/ethnic and socio-economic stratification, is through educational policies explicitly
aimed at ameliorating this hierarchical system of school and choice stratification. Such policies give poor
parents and parents of color greater access to high-status schools or mandating some school-level
balance in terms of the racial/ethnic and social-class make up of students (see Holme and Wells, 2008;
CURE, 2009).
2
We argue, therefore, what has been less closely examined is how this cycle of social reproduction
and resegregation occurs at the intersection of the policies and the ways in which privileged parents
weigh the choices they have, worry about their children’s chances in a competitive society and
educational system, and consider the benefits of racially diverse schools in preparing their children for a
global society. If many privileged parents are contemplating all of these factors at once and struggling
with the multiple contradictions between their options, their anxieties and their beliefs, then researchers
need to understand this tension within individuals who, through their privilege, drive much of the
stratification in the educational system. We argue, based on our research, which attempts to better
understand this intersection of parents, possibilities and anxieties, that there are points of potential
intervention in the school choice-school segregation cycle, if policymakers would only act on them.
To explore these issues, we interviewed 59 parents of different racial/ethnic backgrounds who
participated in the 2006 general education kindergarten lottery or the application process for Gifted and
Talented (G&T) programs within “District Q” (pseudonym), one of New York City’s 32 Community School
Districts, which still exist for the purposes of controlling student access to particular schools. In this
paper, we present our analysis of the subset of interview data from the 39 white, mostly upper-middle
class or affluent parents. In these interviews, we heard how privileged parents made sense of their
school choice options and how those options too often clashed with their understanding of the type of
education they want for their children. They describe the tensions and contradictions they felt while
touring and choosing District Q elementary schools. These parents said, as the vast majority of polled
parents do, that it is either “very” or “somewhat” important for their children to attend a
racially/ethnically diverse school to prepare them for a global economy and society. And yet, when it
came time to choose schools for their children, white parents in District Q are drawn toward schools
(and separate programs within schools) that are predominantly white and thus far more racially
homogeneous than the school district as a whole.
3
As disconcerting as these parents’ decisions may be, they are, more often than not,
understandable, given the options available within the structures of inequality and their anxiety about
helping their children “win” in the competitive scramble for the more prestigious credentials that
defines this era in the U.S. While placing these parents in this larger social and historical context does
not imply they should be absolved of their responsibility for contradicting what they say and what they
actually do, it does broaden the literature on school choice and race to include a more nuanced
understanding of the process of social reproduction through school choice policies and possible
recommendations for breaking that cycle.
Such an ambitious goal requires us to not only understand how these powerful parents make
sense of their choices, but also, in turn, the role they play in shaping and perpetuating racially and socioeconomically segregated school enrollments within the context of a few “good” school choices. For
instance, while the racial/ethnic breakdown of the public school student population of this K-8 school
district is quite diverse – 38 percent African American, 35 percent Hispanic, and 23 percent non-Hispanic
whites (NYCDOE, 2006) – students in these different racial/ethnic groups are fairly segregated across
and within the 18 elementary schools1 in District Q, with white, non-Hispanic students consistently in
the most coveted spots. Even those schools that are diverse in terms of their school-level enrollment
are, more often than not, highly segregated within or across classrooms designated as “gifted” or
“regular.”
At the same time, we learned that while the current situation is bleak when it comes to diversity
and equal educational opportunities in District Q, far more can and should be done by the New York City
Public School policymakers to create successful, racially diverse schools. Our findings suggest that if the
policies and possibilities were altered to further the goal of school- and classroom-level diversity in the
In addition to these 18 schools, there are two selective city-wide schools/programs of choice housed in the District Q
boundaries. The admissions processes for these schools are separate from the District Q process we studied and thus, we do
not include these schools in our analysis.
1
4
context of strong programs with good teachers, many white parents in this district would make choices
that would be more aligned with their espoused values. In this way, privileged parents, who often drive
the system of stratification in any local context, also help us envision possible policy interventions or
moments of rupture in an otherwise on-going process of resegregation and inequality.
In order to better explain what we have learned from these interviews about how parents make
sense of their school options, we provide a conceptual framework of privileged white parents’ school
choices, developed from reading and conducting numerous studies on school choice, racial segregation
and the larger social context of parenting in the early 21st Century (see Wells, et. al., 2009). The central
tenets of this framework are that the most privileged parents – those who are white and relatively
affluent – are making school choices from a particular standpoint, at a particular moment in history
when their anxiety about the education of their children is quite high and the choices available are too
often racially segregated and unequal. And, yet, these parents know intuitively that diversity is
important in preparing their children and the larger society for the future, even as they choose schools
and within-school programs that are not at all diverse.
The Social Context of Privileged Parents’ Choice in Education:
Why Today is a Different Time
Over the last 30 years, social scientists have documented two contradictory trends related to
white parents’ relationship to racially diverse schools: First of all, public opinion polls show that a
growing number of white, non-Hispanic Americans, including parents of school-age children, embrace
the concept of racial diversity in public schools. According to one national survey, a majority (66 percent)
of white parents said that it is “very” or “somewhat” important for their children to attend a diverse
school. Only 16 percent of white parents said that racial diversity was “not important at all” (Farkas and
Johnson, 1998). Similarly, in-depth interviews with nearly 250 graduates of racially diverse public schools
reveal that virtually all the white graduates thought that diverse public schools could better prepare
their children for the 21st Century (see Wells, et. al., 2009).
5
Yet, at the same time that opinion polls have traced whites’ growing acceptance of racial
diversity in public schools over time, the nation’s schools have become increasingly segregated (Orfield
and Lee, 2009). Furthermore, there is some evidence that even as more African American and Latino
families move into suburban school districts, creating more racial/ethnic diversity there, whites are
fleeing those districts, echoing an earlier era when white families fled increasingly diverse urban
neighborhoods (Reardon and Yun, 2001; forthcoming).
These two contradictory but simultaneous trends suggest that whites are saying one thing about
school diversity and doing another when it comes to actually choosing and enrolling their children in
schools. In fact, there is small, but growing body of literature documenting these contradictions
between what parents say and what they do in relation to school-level diversity (see Smrekar, 2009;
Wells, et. al., 2009). Understanding this apparent contradiction, how white parents make sense of it, and
what role educational policy – particularly school choice policies -- could play in creating and sustaining
diverse schools is critical to exploring the limits and possibilities of future efforts to address educational
inequality.
Meanwhile, it is important to remember that contradictions between what people say and what
they do is not unusual -- particularly when it comes to issues of race -- nor have such phenomena been
ignored in the social science literature. For instance, Gunner Myrdal (1962) portrayed the so-called
“American dilemma” -- a symbol of a society that espoused one set of beliefs about racial equality while
maintaining a solid system of segregation by both de jure and de facto means. And then, of course,
there is DuBois’s (2003) concept of double consciousness – or the notion of a “twoness” that African
American’s experience living in a society where they are seen as “negroes” while also striving to be
“Americans” and the contradictions between the two.
Contemplating a form of white double consciousness concerning issues of race, Wells et. al.
(2009) examined the literature on whiteness and white racial identity, and even a nascent theory of
6
“white dual racism,” which is a form of white double consciousness. Applied to the current U.S. context,
the notion of double consciousness explains how whites can simultaneously espouse a belief in
“colorblindness” while making choices that explicitly maintain their own privilege in a racially divided
society – e.g. choosing the all-white or predominantly white schools. According to this theory, in the
current post-civil-rights era, most whites claim to be strong supporters of equal opportunities for all and
see slavery and Jim Crow as evils that we have overcome, thus completing the anti-racism work. Still,
high degrees of racial inequality and segregation persist. Thus, despite white’s claims of colorblindness,
race still clearly matters to them, particularly when they are buying homes, choosing schools for their
children, or joining a religious institution. As Sue (2005) notes, “Most Whites were socialized into
oppressor roles yet taught concepts of social democracy, fairness, justice, and equality” (p. 109).
Various social theorists examining the duality of white people’s contemporary racial attitudes
have struggled with the tension of the continuing legacy of White supremacy coexisting in an uneasy
union with the moral and political demands of the post-civil rights movement. For example, Winant
(1997; 2004) espoused a theory of “white racial dualism,” which he defines as a way of extending to
whites the DuBoisian idea of double consciousness. He notes that the very idea of whiteness has been
“deeply fissured by the racial conflicts of the post-civil rights period.” Since the 1960s, Winant (1997)
writes, “white identities have been displaced and refigured: They are now contradictory, as well as
confused and anxiety-ridden, to an unprecedented extent. It is this situation that I describe as white
racial dualism” (pp. 3-4).
This form of white double consciousness leads to dualistic and often contradictory allegiances to
both privilege and equality, to color consciousness and color blindness, to treating everyone “equally”
regardless of skin color or histories of unequal treatment and for policies and programs that help
remedy past injustices. That whites can simultaneously hold all of these views – with some remaining
more fixed in one allegiance than the other – helps explain their often confusing and contradictory
7
attitudes toward race and racial diversity in schools. We learned, through several studies conducted by
Wells and colleagues, that in the course of one interview, it was not uncommon for white parents to
speak fervently in support of both more racially diverse schools and putting their own child in an elite,
exclusive and segregative program. Or, as we see in New York City, such views of the world lead to
support for school choice policies and practices that on the surface may seem “colorblind” and more
egalitarian, but in reality help to maintain white, higher income parent’s power and privilege.
According to powell (1997), racial matters are influenced in large part by factors that can be
characterized as neither “intentional--in the sense that certain outcomes are self-consciously sought-nor unintentional--in the sense that the outcomes are random, fortuitous, and uninfluenced by the
decisionmaker's beliefs, desires and wishes” (powell, 1997). From a white, middle- or upper-middle-class
parents’ perspective, the school choice process ensconces in their “intentions” – e.g. valuing diversity in
public schools – and their not “unintentional” decisions to put their children in predominantly white and
affluent schools, despite their good intensions. The explanation for such results, powell (1997) writes, is
because people are context-dependent and thus strongly influenced by both the larger meaning of race
within a society and the larger structures of racial inequality – e.g. housing segregation, school and
district boundaries, and separate and unequal schools and classrooms.
These structures and how they are maintained through both intentional and not unintentional
acts, according to Anderson (2003), are what too many social theorists overlook when writing about
“whiteness.” She notes that the “whiteness” literature focuses almost exclusively on white identity and
norms and not enough on the structural and institutional arrangements that allow racial inequality to
continue. She notes, for instance, that in the whiteness literature there is little mention of “global
capitalism, split labor markets, residential segregation, school tracking and so forth.” When theorists
ignore these contextual factors, which shape white people’s choices and rationales, Anderson (2003)
8
argues, “all of the mechanisms and sites of racial domination and subordination disappear from view”
(p. 28).
The central problem with this de-contextual, normative analysis, according to Anderson (2003), is
that it assumes that the problems of racism can be solved by white people changing their minds. And
while she admits that confronting one’s own racial prejudice is part of challenging the racial order,
leaving things in the hands of “unlearning racism” is likely to do little to unseat the apparatus of racial
power. “The idea that whites just individually give up their whiteness seems ludicrous if one
understands that racial identity is not just an individual process but involves the formation of social
groups organized around the material interests with their roots in social structure, not just individual
consciousness” (Anderson, 2003; p. 30).
In this current, post-Civil Rights era of American history, when parents’ anxiety about their
economic security and their children’s future runs extremely high, we should not be surprised that white
parents display their double consciousness about racial diversity and segregation when making school
choices. Furthermore, when these white and affluent parents reside in close proximity to each other,
which they often do given the degree of residential segregation in the U.S., and network and interact
with each other, they foster a collective understanding about which schools are appropriate for children
like theirs. According to Mannheim (1936), people do not think or make decisions as individuals, but
rather they think in groups “that have developed a particular style of thought in an endless series of
responses to certain typical situations characterizing their common position” (emphasis added, p.3).
By “common position” Mannheim (1935) meant social status, particularly in terms of social class.
We assume that if he had been writing in and about the U.S. context more specifically, he would have
considered race/ethnicity as essential as well. Thus, when thinking about white, upper-middle-class
parents’ “common position” as it relates to their “style of thought,” we know that both race and class
are critical factors. But we should also consider their positioning in terms of the moment in history when
9
they are rearing children. In other words, all parents are part of a larger cohort or generation of parents
who share somewhat similar birth dates and are parenting at the same time, and therefore
encountering similar societal conditions and trends. In fact, sociologists have long stressed the impact of
sharing specific historical events and conditions on the character of particular generations who live
through them, creating a distinct generational consciousness (Roberts and Lang 1985; Schuman and
Scott 1989).
In the case of today’s parents of school-aged children, most were born in the 1960s or 70s, with
an emerging presence of those born in the early 1980s. Thus, their so-called generational consciousness
developed during the Civil Rights and early post-Civil Rights era, when white racial attitudes seemingly
improved and/or became more covert. Yet, at the same time, they became adults and bore children in
the midst of a much more conservative, Reagan and post-Reagan era, when the policy focus in education
was on easily measured outcomes and market-based competition for the most coveted seats in a
stratified system – all amid a political backlash against policies designed to further racial integration and
equality (see Edsall and Edsall, 1991; Wells, 2009; Wells, et. al, 2009).
Coinciding with this more conservative era in which this cohort of parents has come of age,
bought houses and had children, is a period of U.S. history when income inequality increased
dramatically, as workers in the top tiers of the income distribution experienced dramatic salary gains
and the number of workers who are barely getting by has grown (see Kopczuk, Saez, & Song, 2007; and
Lemieux, 2007). In fact, from 1979 to 2005, the after-tax annual income for the bottom fifth of American
households increased by only 6 percent. At the same time, income for the top fifth jumped by an
impressive 80 percent, and income for the top 1 percent, soared by 228 percent (Greenhouse, 2008; p.
40). By the beginning of the 21st Century, the U.S. held the distinction of having the greatest income
disparities of any advanced industrial society (Dreier, Mollenkoph, and Swanstrom, 2004; Lewis
Mumford Center, 2003). Such a broader context of inequality and change has no doubt had an impact
10
on those who are closer to the top of the increasingly skewed income distribution, making them more
anxious about their potentially precarious economic position and concerned about how to pass their
relative advantage on to their children (Ehrenreich, 1990; Levine, 2006).
In thinking about today’s upper-middle class white parents in this more contextual way, it is clear
they have not arrived at their school choices in isolation. In fact, as we describe below, our data from
NYC and the kindergarten lottery speak to these contextual factors and their impact on today’s parents.
But the other critical question that must be asked and answered is how the political system responds to
these parents’ sense of anxiety in such a way that legitimizes policies allowing separate and unequal
educational opportunities to be maintained, and often times, exacerbated. In this next section of the
paper, we present this broader policy context of the parents we studied in New York.
The Local Social Context of White Parents’ Choices: The City, the System and District Q
As we noted above, in the macro social context of recent U.S. history, the white and fairly
privileged parents we studied in 2006 came of age at a time when income inequality was on the rise.
Furthermore, most of these parents have benefited financially from an economy in which those at the
higher end of the income distribution made the greatest gains. Looking at affluent parents in the context
of New York City, however, makes this recent economic history all the more striking. For within so-called
“global cities” such as New York, this income inequality and the resulting hour-glass labor market
comprised of many high- and many low-paid workers are even more salient. Sassen (2006), for instance,
describes New York as one of the most “global” cities in terms of its economy, meaning that it requires
both well-paid, highly educated professionals and poorly paid, poorly educated service workers. In
response to this hour-glass labor market and other forces, the percentage of New Yorkers who are white
and affluent has increased in recent years, even as the City has become one of the top U.S. destinations
for poorly educated and poorly paid low-skill immigrants (Portes and Rumbaut, 2006).
11
As a result of these immigration and migration patterns, New York City has one of the most
socio-economically bifurcated residential populations, with thousands of very affluent, mostly white
residents living in close proximity to millions of working poor residents. To the extent that even a small
percentage of these affluent urban residents will choose public as opposed to private school for their
children, gentrifying global cities such as New York are potential sites of a growing number of
racially/ethnically and socio-economically diverse public schools. Unfortunately, this vision of diverse,
dynamic public schools is not shared by the New York City mayor or school’s chancellor, who has yet to
facilitate the development of such schools through policies or programs.
The New York City Public Schools and District Q
The New York City's School Chancellor, Joel Klein, who was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg in
2002 to run the mammoth school system after the New York state legislature allowed for mayoral
control of the City’s schools, has taken a “colorblind” stance when it comes to student assignment
policies. He does not, apparently, see racial diversity at the school or classroom level as a goal that he
supports. In fact, responding to a question on a radio show about desegregating the city’s public schools,
Klein was quoted as saying, "Almost three quarters of our students are African American and Latino. In
an environment like that, a focus on racial balance seems to me to be not the way to solve the problem.
A focus on high-quality education for every kid in every school I think is the way" (Goldstein, 2007).
As of 2006-07, the total New York City Public Schools’ student population was almost 40 percent
Latino and 32 percent black. About 14 percent of the students were Asian and the remaining 14 percent
were white. Over the last 20 years, the Latino and Asian populations have grown rapidly, and the white
and African American populations have shrunk. Indeed, in 1990-91, white students constituted almost
20 percent of the total NYC Public School enrollment, and at that time there were still more black than
Latino students (NCES, 2009).
12
But across the 32 Community School Districts that organize the enrollments of the K-8 student
enrollment, there is a great deal of demographic variation, with some pockets of intense racial and
ethnic diversity. So while, overall, Chancellor Klein’s argument makes sense, in the Community School
District where we conducted our research – a pocket of the City we will refer to as District Q -- the public
school student population is incredibly diverse (see Table 1), with more African American (38 percent)
and white (23 percent) and fewer Latino and Asian students than the citywide school system.
NYC Public
Schools total
District Q
Table 1
Percent of the 2006-07 New York City versus District Q
Student Population by Race/Ethnicity
Latino
African
White
Asian
American
39.4
32.2
14.2
13.7
35
38
23
.05
Meanwhile, although nearly 71 percent of the New York City Public School population as a whole
is eligible for free or reduced price lunch, in District Q, 54 percent of students are (NCES, 2009; NYCDOE,
2005-06). These demographics reflect the fact that District Q encompasses a mix of very affluent
neighborhoods interwoven with several high-rise public housing buildings and an ethnic enclave of
recent Latino immigrants. There are also several subsidized or rent stabilized residential buildings, some
controlled by the City and others provided by the university within the District’s boundaries.
But the overall diversity of the student population in the district is not reflected in the schoollevel enrollment patterns. Because of the supposedly “colorblind” student assignment policy supported
by Chancellor Klein, the degree of racial/ethnic diversity within District Q’s 18 schools that enroll
elementary students is far less than it could be given the overall district demographics (see Table 2
below). For instance, almost all of the District’s white elementary school students were enrolled in only
six of the 18 schools. In fact, in a school district that is only 23 percent white, five of these six schools
had, as of 2006-07, student populations that ranged from 23 to 67 percent white. Meanwhile, the
remaining 12 schools enroll a disproportionate number of black and Latino students, with school-level
13
demographics that ranged from 80 to 100 percent black and/or Latino. In fact six District Q schools had a
95 percent or more black/Latino student enrollment (NYCDOE, 2008/09).
In Table 2, we broke the racial/ethnic make-up of each district school enrolling elementary
students down by three “types” of elementary schools found in District Q: 1. Neighborhood Schools
with G&T and General Education Programs, 2. Neighborhood Schools with no G&T, and 3. a District-wide
Choice or Magnet School with no zone or catchment. Furthermore, the rows of data are shaded or not
based on whether the schools are comprised disproportionately of students of color (darker shade) or
whether they have white student populations that are closer to the District Q average or higher (lighter
shade).
And, as is true in most areas of the country, District Q schools with high concentrations of
students of color are also quite poor. For instance, District Q schools with 95 percent or more students
of color, have between 71 and 83 percent of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch (NYCDOE,
2008/09). Conversely in those six District Q schools with a disproportionate number of white students,
only between 10 and 50 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch (NYCDOE,
2008/09).
14
Table 2:
Student’s Race/Ethnicity and Eligibility for Free and Reduced Price Lunch (FRPL) for
Each “District Q” School by School Type 1
Public
Total
School
Students
% Black
% Hispanic % White % Asian
% FRPL
School Type 1:
Neighborhood Schools with G&T and General Education Programs
A
524
13
31
48
7
30
B
632
27
47
23
3
50
C
615
20
27
48
6
29
D
656
16
73
6
4
75
2
E
264
69
27
2
1
72
F
290
44
44
8
4
64
School Type 2:
Neighborhood Schools with no G&T just the General Education Program
G
932
19
23
49
8
16
H
663
7
12
67
13
10
3
I
484
32
61
4
2
94
4
J
201
67
32
0
0
90
K
762
31
48
14
6
56
∗
358
76
20
2
2
82
L
M
458
34
61
4
1
71
∗
419
78
21
0
1
76
N
∗
601
75
23
1
0
74
O
∗
301
79
15
2
1
71
P
Q
244
90
8
1
0
83
School Type 3:
K-8 Schools with Selective Admissions
R
712
23
23
45
8
17
TOTALS
9116
38
35
23
.05
54
All 2008/09 statistics taken from the NYCDOE website, http://schools.nyc.gov. Schools shaded light gray are schools that
have a disproportionate number of white students, and schools shaded dark gray are schools that have a majority of students
of color.
1
All schools were renamed using alphabetical order to protect confidentiality, and are grades K-5 unless otherwise noted.
K-2 School
3
Recently started a G&T program.
4
3-5 School that recently started a G&T program in conjunction with it’s sister school, “E”
∗
K-8 schools
2
15
As alarming as these school-level segregation figures are in the context of a diverse school
district, they mask yet another layer of racial separation and inequality at the classroom level. Of the six
District Q elementary schools that enroll at least a 22 percent white student enrollment, three house
Gifted and Talented (G&T) programs that separate “gifted” from “regular” (meaning non-gifted)
education students by classrooms. Thus, while these three schools may look somewhat racially balanced
overall, their G&T programs maintain pervasive within school segregation.
Gifted and Talented Programs in NYC and District Q
Up until fall 2009, when two new G&T programs were slated to open in District Q, there was a
total of six such programs in the district’s 18 elementary schools. These G&T programs operate in a
parallel but separate fashion from the “regular” or “general education” classrooms within schools. At
the time of our study in 2006-07, most students were accepted into the G&T programs based on their
scores on privately administered IQ tests, which cost hundreds of dollars to take, and their preschool
teacher’s recommendation. Thus, students whose parents could afford the private IQ testing and who
attended private preschool programs with low teacher-student ratios definitely had an advantage in this
process, although the City did provide a publicly funded testing alternative and a preschool teacher
evaluation for those families that could not afford the private exam or preschool.
In 2007, Chancellor Klein amended the NYC system’s G&T policy, which we discuss below in our
Policy Recommendations section. These changes were designed, according to the Chancellor, to expand
low income students’ access to the coveted G&T programs. While this new policy did not affect the
parents we interviewed, the conditions that were the impetus for the new policy did exist when these
parents applied. Furthermore, as we note below in our recommendation section, the new policy actually
exacerbated the inequality instead of alleviating it.
16
Table 3
2007-08 New York City Public School
Kindergarten Students in Gifted and Talented Programs Race/Ethnicty 2007-08
NYC Public Schools City-Wide
Kindergarten and 1st Grade Total
Student Population by
Race/ethnicity
NYC Public Schools City-wide
Kindergarten Gifted and Talented
Enrollment by Race/ethnicity
Source: Kolodner (2008)
White
Black
Asian
Latino
18%
25%
16%
41%
52%
16%
20%
9%
While we do not have this sort of racial/ethnic data for G&T programs versus general education
programs just for District Q, we do know from site visits to many of these schools, newspaper and
advocacy reports, and the interview data presented below, that the G&T programs housed in District Q
schools with larger percentages of white students are almost entirely white. Meanwhile the “general
education” classes in those same schools are almost entirely comprised of students of color.
Furthermore, a highly critical report on racial/ethnic segregation and inequality in District Q
elementary schools conducted by the Center for Immigrant Families (CIF), an immigrant advocacy group,
found that the six G&T programs drive much of the white enrollment in the district, attracting a
disproportionate number of white families and pulling them away from other schools. These programs,
therefore, exacerbate racial/ethnic segregation across and within schools (CIF, 2005). The report
provided clear evidence of this in some District Q schools where the G&T programs were expanding and
the number of white students was growing rapidly. For example, one school that was developing a G&T
program one grade at a time had a 55 percent white student enrollment in kindergarten but only a 9
percent white student population in its 5th grade.
Walking down the corridors of the three District Q schools with both G&T programs and more
than a negligible white student population – basically schools A, B and C – the racial divide between the
G&T and “general” or “regular” education classrooms is visibly jarring. It is sometimes difficult to believe
17
that such powerful within-building racial segregation still exists in 2009 in the United States, let alone in
a “liberal and progressive” city like New York. But exist they do, and in more than one school in District Q
and in more than one district across the system. These programs and their racial/ethnic distinctions are
not only shaped by parental choices, they also provide the contours of possibilities for subsequent sets
of parents going through the kindergarten choice process in District Q.
The end result of these structures and contours is that District Q parents are faced with five
racially/ethnically distinct school/program choices:
1. Predominantly black, Latino and poor neighborhood or zoned schools with or without G&T programs
(schools D, E, F, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q in Table 2),
2. Predominantly black, Latino and poor “general education” programs within schools that have
predominantly white G&T programs (schools A, B, & C in Table 2),
3. Predominantly white G&T programs within these same schools (also schools A, B & C in Table 2),
4. Neighborhood, zoned schools that are predominantly white – or nearly so -- because of demographics
of their catchment areas (schools G & H in Table 2)
5. A racially diverse, thematic magnet “school of choice” with no zone or neighborhood catchment and
no G&T program (school R in Table 2).
Also, it is important to note that both schools in category 4 above have very limited seats for
students who do not live in their attendance zone or neighborhood catchment. In fact, the year we
conducted this study, the H school, which is 67 percent white and thus the whitest school in the district,
only had one seat open for a non-neighborhood “choice” student to come in through the lottery after
the neighborhood students had taken their guaranteed seats. By the 2008-09 school year, this popular
elementary school had no seats available for non-catchment students applying via the lottery.
In an effort to address some of the structural issues raised in the Center for Immigrant Families’
(CIF) highly critical 2005 report on racial inequality and segregation within District Q, district officials
18
began to revamp the kindergarten choice process. Our research was the first effort to examine the
impact of that revised system on students’ opportunities and access.
The “New” Kindergarten Student Assignment/Enrollment Policies in District Q
Beginning in 2005, District Q officials implemented a new “preferred choice” lottery system for
kindergarten admissions to general education (non-G&T) classrooms outside of a students’ zoned
school. The espoused goal of the new program was to make the process more fair, streamlined, and
accessible for disadvantaged parents. Before the switch to a more regulated, “preferred choice” lottery
system in 2005, the district had used an “open enrollment” choice policy, which allowed families who
wanted to leave their neighborhood school a process for applying to another school in the district that
had extra seats. But in practice, the number of available seats varied tremendously by school.
Furthermore, in this more decentralized system, each school created its own unique admissions process,
with different applications, requirements, and tour dates. Not coincidently, the most popular and more
affluent schools had the most complex admissions processes. This system was difficult for parents to
navigate, particularly for parents who lacked flexible schedules, resources and knowledgeable social
networks. Furthermore, the individual schools ultimately had the “choice” in the matter, with final say
on who was admitted.
The newer, more centralized, 2005 “preferred choice” policy is a lottery system for students
zoned to a school they do not want to attend. The number of lottery spots available for out-of-zone
students is still defined by the school’s leadership based on the number of zoned students and siblings
who enroll and its determined capacity. The students who want to leave their assigned neighborhood
school through the lottery can choose up to six schools (changed to four schools in the second year of
the lottery) on the choice application. If they are lucky they will be randomly selected into one of their
top choice schools if there are non-zoned seats available. The number of available seats for siblings and
19
non-zoned students in the schools ranged from 7 to 84 seats for the 2006/07 school year (NYCDOE,
2005/06).
This new school choice lottery system does not include the G&T program admissions process, but
it does include many of the same parents who are applying for both the coveted zoned schools and G&T
programs. The only change made to the G&T application for 2005-06 was the discontinuation of a
practice of allowing siblings to have priority in the same G&T programs as their older brothers and
sisters. The G&T admissions, therefore, is not part of a lottery system; the students are assigned to G&T
classrooms based on their scores and whether there are available seats if they score high enough. At
the time of our study, if a sibling of a G&T student scored well on the exam, there was no guarantee that
the younger sibling would be admitted at their older sibling’s school. This policy has since changed with
the new city-wide G&T admissions process in 2008. Now there is sibling priority if the student scores
above the 90th percentile cutoff.
The School Choice Process in the New System
The school choice process starts in the fall when families pick up the District Q elementary school
choice directory and application from the district office, the district’s elementary schools, pre-K centers
and community organizations and also on-line for parents to print and then fill out. In the lottery for the
2006/07 kindergarten class, families could choose up to six schools on the application (the district
changed it to four choices in the second year of the lottery).
All the District Q elementary schools are now required by the district to offer school tours
between November and January. Parents have to call and make an appointment for these tours before
they fill up, and the lottery application is due mid-January. Many parents reported that they had to take
off work to attend the school tours that were mostly offered on weekday mornings. A letter of
acceptance or a wait-list notification is sent to parents between the end of February for the first round
20
or tier of the lottery and the end of April for the second tier. Then, the parents have to reply in writing if
they want to accept the offer or decline it by the end of March for Tier I or the end of May for Tier II.
Lottery Results for 2005-06
It was reported that overall, 383 students in the district and 182 students outside of the district
applied through the general education lottery for the 2006-07 kindergarten class. Meanwhile, a total of
565 students applied to the G&T program (See Table 4) (NYCDOE, 2006). Because of the overlap
between the two groups of applicants, the total number of applicants for a seat in a District Q
kindergarten class – G&T or general – was 599. Of these applicants, 59 percent (235 students) of the
families got their first choice school, 41 percent (164 students) got something other than their first
choice school, and 29 percent (166 students) were not get placed in any school through the lottery
(NYCDOE, 2006). There were 372 seats available for the general education, out-of-zone students in the
lottery, but only 258 students were placed into one of their choice schools, implying that there were
unpopular choices that were not accepted (NYCDOE, 2006).
21
Table 4
2005-06 District Q Kindergarten Lottery Results
Applied for
Lottery
Applied for G&T
Placed in General
Ed. Or G&T
classroom
Total
Inside the District
Outside the District
565
383 (68%)
182 (32%)
599
559 (93%)
40 (7%)
399
258 (65%)
141 (35%)
Our Study of District Q’s Kindergarten Lottery
Below we present central themes that emerged from our interview data with 59 parents
participating in the District Q kindergarten lottery. These interviewees were randomly selected from a
list of lottery participants provided by the District Q administration. Normally, when doing this type of
in-depth qualitative work, we would employ purposive sampling to assure diversity across interviewees
in terms of key factors, such as parents’ race, ethnicity, income, education levels, etc. Because we lacked
such sampling information, we randomly sampled the participants within zip codes to assure we had a
mix of people across the many distinct neighborhoods of the District Q.
Since the district does not ask families their race and socioeconomic status on the choice
application, we asked if the parents would give us this information as well as their immigrant status and
languages spoken at home during the interview, in order to discern if families from diverse backgrounds
experience the school choice process in different ways. It turns out that the parents we interviewed
were diverse on several of the factors listed above. They came from different neighborhoods, cultures,
and socio-economic backgrounds, even though the majority, 83 percent, were mothers, and lived in
District Q (88 percent). Roughly two-thirds of the parent’s interviewed, or 39 out of 59, were white,
one-third were black and Asian, and the rest “Other” (composed primarily of Hispanic, bi-racial and
multi-racial children). The range of annual family income was quite wide across the interviewees, with
roughly 30 percent representing families making more than $150,000 per year (and many of these
families making more than $200,000 per year), about half the parents said their annual family income
22
was between $50,000 and $150,000, and one-fourth reported an annual family income of less than
$50,000 per year. We also found the common correlation between class and race, with virtually all of
the high income families being white and all of the lowest income families black or Latino. In fact, only
one white parent reported a family income of less than $50,000, while 21 of the 39 white respondents
reported an annual family income of more than $150,000; for 16 of these families, the annual income
was greater than $200,000 per year.
The larger percentage of white, upper-middle-class parents in our random sample is
understandable because they disproportionately participate in the District Q kindergarten choice
process, even as many of them end up enrolling their children in private schools. These affluent white
parents are at the focus of our analysis for this paper because, as we noted above, they often exert
more agency, power, and control in the school choice process.
Also, reflecting the relative privilege of the parents we interviewed, the vast majority – 66
percent -- had sent their child to a private preschool. The other 34 percent had either not sent their
children to preschool or had enrolled them in a public preschool such as Head Start or their zoned
elementary school. Also, in our sample we found that 59 percent of the parents we interviewed were
participating in the District Q school choice system for the first time. On the other hand, 41 percent had
older children and thus had participated in the old system of school choice. This meant they were
eligible for sibling preference if they applied for the general education program at the same school.
When we analyzed which zoned school most of the families were coming from, not surprisingly,
we found that the majority were leaving five schools that were majority black and/or Latino and had
high percentages of students eligible for FRPL. About 54 percent of the parents said they did not tour
their zoned school. This lack of interest in such schools relates to our central findings about privileged
white parents and the social construction of good schools and choices.
23
White New York City Parents Choosing Elementary Schools:
Where Diversity, Anxiety, Policy and Possibilities Collide
Once our interviews were transcribed verbatim, we coded the transcripts to identify the most
salient themes to emerge across the interviewees. From the interviews with the white and more affluent
respondents, the following three themes emerged that speak most directly to the framework we
present above: 1. Valuing Diversity but Facing Few Choices of Racially Diverse Schools, 2. The Double
Consciousness of “Liberal” but Anxious NYC White Parents, and 3. Making Adequate but Somewhat
Unhappy Choices. We describe each of these three themes, their overlaps and interconnections, below.
Valuing Diversity but Frustrated by a Lack of “Good,” Racially Diverse Schools
Echoing the national opinion poll data cited above and our prior research (see Wells, Holme, et.
al., 2009; CURE, 2009), the majority of the parents – particularly the white parents -- we interviewed in
District Q talked about the value of diversity in public schools. In fact, a full 75 percent of the 59 parents
we interviewed said race was an important factor when choosing schools. And when asked more
specifically if the racial makeup of the school was important, 80 percent of the white parents
interviewed said that it was and that they wanted a diverse school. Only eight of the white parents said
that they had not really thought about it before our interview, but everyone we studied said that
“diversity” per se – at least in the abstract – was important or valuable at some level. These parents, in
particular, as residents of one of the most diverse and global cities in the world seem to know intuitively
that racial segregation across and within the public schools is disturbing. As one white parent explained:
“Yes, it is important… we live in New York City so that we can be part of a diverse community.”
Another white mother, who, like many parents we interviewed, said she was frustrated by how
separate and unequal the schools and classrooms are in District Q in terms of race and class, stated:
“One of the reasons that we live in New York City is so we can raise kids in America that aren’t racist,
and it’s even hard to do here…”
24
Despite the value that most parents place on diversity, their reality when it comes to diverse
school choices in District Q is, as we noted above, quite limited, consisting of basically five types of
public schools or programs: 1. predominantly black, Latino and poor neighborhood or zoned schools
with or without G&T programs; 2. predominantly black, Latino and poor “general education” programs
within schools that have predominantly white G&T programs; 3. the mostly white G&T programs within
these same schools; 4. neighborhood, zoned schools that are predominantly white – or nearly so -because of demographics of their catchment areas; and 5. one racially diverse, thematic magnet “school
of choice” with no zone or neighborhood catchment and no G&T program. Only one of the schools in
category 4 and the only school in category 5 will provide these parents with what they say they want in
terms of school- and classroom-level diversity. But these programs are not large enough to
accommodate all the white parents in the district who demand them.
Caught in the middle of mostly unsatisfactory choices, these parents often asked why their
options in the public system had to be so limited. As one white parent commented when asked what he
thought of his daughter’s zoned neighborhood school with its separate, predominantly white G&T
program and the mostly black and Latino “general education” classrooms right across the hallway: “…it
kind of turned us off because it really seemed like two separate worlds. There was the G&T and then
everything else… The curriculum, the kids, you know even just the color of the student’s skin, really. I
mean it was a much lighter colored G&T program compared to the general population.”
Another white mother explained that across the whole school district there is a big difference
between the G&T classrooms and the regular or “general” education classrooms. She said:
I want real diversity. I don’t want my daughter to be the only white kid in
the class. I don’t want her to be in a class with all white kids. I don’t want
either. I wanted it to be mixed and there’s enough kids that it just should
be mixed… it’s a messed up thing in her school, and she’s like ‘why did they
put all the white kids in one class?
25
It is clear that these parents not only bemoan the lack of diversity at the school level, in many
instances, they are also highly bothered by the apartheid-like atmosphere of the G&T versus the regular
education classrooms in several District Q schools -- even when they have made the choice of a G&T
classroom for their children.
A white mother whose husband toured their neighborhood school, which has a G&T program,
said he was shocked by the segregation between the G&T and general education classrooms. She
explained that he is Italian and had never set foot inside an American school before. She reported that
he claimed that even if the school officials had purposively tried to segregate the classrooms they could
not have done a better job. Yet another white, middle-class mother, who ended up choosing a G&T
classroom, said she would prefer a school that did not have the gifted versus non-gifted distinction
between classes because she could see the “classism and racism” in her daughter’s school. “Her class is
really white. There’s hardly any diversity… I definitely think there is a sense of the gifted program
versus the regular school… It’s something that maybe you can’t avoid.”
An affluent white parent who also chose the G&T program for her daughter said that she did so
because she thought it would be the most challenging program:
The only problem I had with that school is the G&T’s in general are not
diverse, the classes themselves are not diverse, so I sort of hesitated on
sending her there because I know that there’s kind of a pretty big
discrepancy between the gen ed and the G&T and I think that’s probably a
big problem, you know, not just in that school but possibly city-wide.
That’s the only thing…
Similarly, another very affluent white parent noted the fact that her zoned school is very diverse
altogether, but that the G&T is not diverse, which turns people off from the public schools. She said that
she knows a lot of people are put off by the fact that the general education classes tend to be mostly
minority, and the G&T tends to be mostly white. “It’s something that every single G&T parent that I’ve
met has had an issue with that. They wish it would be more diverse.”
26
One white mother who actually chose a general or “regular” education classroom for her child in
one of the more diverse schools said, “I want my kids to grow up in New York City, not in a tiny enclave
that doesn’t look like the city. If I wanted that I would live in the suburbs. I want them to be exposed to
different people, and that doesn’t happen in the G&T. It’s a two-tiered system.”
Not Wanting to be in the “Minority”: The Other Side of the Diversity Coin
The second dimension of this valuing of diversity, as it relates to white, upper-middle class
parents within the context of the racially and socio-economically (SES) diverse District Q, is that
“diversity” means not “too black or Latino.” While parents who look at the choice process from another
racial/ethnic or socio-economic standpoint may have a different way of defining what a “diverse” public
school is, these mostly high SES white parents are quite clear that “diversity” entails a critical mass of
white students. For instance, one middle-class, white mother whose zoned school was “heavily
Hispanic” said she would not send her children there because of the lack of diversity: “it would be nice if
schools weren’t so heavily one way or the other, if there would be a more even distribution of those
different groups. If they could possibly do that, mix them up a little bit.”
It is clear from our interviews for this and other studies (see Holme, 2002; Wells, et. al., 2009)
that white parents want a critical mass of other white students in their children’s schools. This
preference on the part of white District Q parents, which is in no way unique to this context, is
particularly problematic given that the vast majority of school/program choice options in this district fall,
as we noted, into category 1 above, meaning that they are predominantly black and/or Latino and lowincome. This means that the number of “acceptable” choices -- as defined by white parents in this
district -- is quite small. As one white mother replied, “I don’t want to be the minority. I want a
comfortable place for my children.”
While the social construction of race and thus white parents tendency to equate anything – in
this case a school or classroom -- that is predominantly black or Latino as “less than” another school or
27
institution that is predominantly white is clearly a central factor here, so is white parents often intuitive
understandings of the unequal material conditions across communities and schools. For instance, one
white parent whose nearby neighborhood school had few if any white students attending, noted that
this lack of white and affluent students translates into a lack of resources and support. She said that
when the school “becomes heavily weighted by a group that um…doesn’t have the same resources or
enough resources, so they’re below the poverty line and don’t have enough English, and then I think
that’s a problem.”
But parents’ perceptions of resources and opportunities are tightly intertwined with their
knowledge of the racial/ethnic make up of a school, making it difficult for them to move beyond the
stereotypes and “reputations” that are tightly linked to the racial/ethnic make up of the student bodies.
In fact, we learned that many parents did not even tour their zoned school because they heard it was
not a good choice for them, often times because it was “not diverse enough,” which was coded language
for saying it lacked white students. As one parent noted, she did not want their child to be in the
minority: “I wouldn’t be comfortable if my kid were like one of two white kids in a class.”
This also translated into parents comfort level with classrooms within schools that were seen as
not white enough. For instance, a white mother who chose the G&T classroom for her child knew that
other people thought the segregation was a problem, but justified her decision because of what she saw
as behavior problems in the general education classrooms with the minority children: “I just felt like
when we were in the general ed classes you could see the kids were just not paying attention… a totally
different kind of energy. Like the kids had their heads on the desk, stuff like that. I mean it was really
like palpable, and of course there’s the whole racial disparity and like the makeup of the classrooms…”
Meanwhile, the parents who had biracial or multiracial children wanted a school that had some
representation of both race/ethnicities so their child did not feel uncomfortable. For example, one Asian
mother with biracial white and Asian children thought the zoned school was “mostly minority and we’re
28
biracial white and Asian and I felt that they would be isolated there… I wanted enough kids in the
environment that represented the neighborhood and that represented the city so that my children
would neither be the white kids or neither be the minority kids.”
Double Consciousness of “Liberal” but Anxious NYC White Parents
The findings presented above suggest that the vast majority of these white middle- and uppermiddle class New York City parents value “diversity” in their children’s schools and classrooms in the
abstract and struggle with the racial/ethnic segregation they see in District Q. Yet, at the same time,
these parents are raising children in the current era of inequality we described in our framework above.
In fact, these economically successful white parents in particular, have benefited more than most of
their counterparts in the educational system from the economic developments of the last three
decades. Furthermore, this privileged standpoint provides them with a relative advantage in terms of
the resources and networks needed to do the work of school choice (Holme, 2002, Moore and
Davenport, 1990; Brantlinger et al., 1996; Willms and Echols, 1993; and Goldring and Hausman, 1999)
and a heightened sense of the consequences of not winning the competition for the “best” seats (see
Wells, et. al., 2009).
Indeed, our interview data suggest that these white parents’ advantaged position weighs heavy
on their understanding of the school choice process for their children and their sense of anxiety about
that process. This anxiety molds the way they think about race and the racial diversity of the
schools/programs they consider for their own children and how race and class are intertwined with issues
of status, prestige, and advantage. As we know from much other research, the racial/ethnic make up of
an institution such as a school becomes a symbol for that school’s social status within a school choice
system regardless of the teaching and learning occurring within (Holme, 2002; Johnson and Shapiro,
2003; Wells and Holme, 2006). Such an association is not completely unfounded, given what we know
about the relationship between the concentration of poverty/racial segregation of students of color and
29
student achievement/learning conditions (see Wells and Frankenberg, 2007 for a review). But there is a
degree of self-fulfilling prophecy occurring between the rapid manner in which white and affluent
parents dismiss schools with many students of color and the expectations and opportunities available
within those schools. This prophecy and its impact is far more extreme and potentially detrimental within
a context of severe racial segregation across schools and classrooms, with few truly diverse schools
where such stereotypes could be challenged and amended.
Furthermore, the backdrop to these choices are the white parents’ discriminating sense of what’s
at stake in terms of their children’s education and their futures in a highly unequal society. This social
context causes them to too often make choices that contradict the value they supposedly place on
diversity in public education. This double consciousness allows them to simultaneously espouse the
benefits of diversity while choosing schools and programs that are racially homogeneous, difficult to get
into, and seen as more elitist. The fact that their choices of truly diverse schools and programs are
extremely limited within the District Q context only plays on the “twoness” of their decision. At the same
time, this policy context allows them to cash in on their privilege by using their resources and networks to
gain a relative advantage.
It is clear from our interviews with parents in District Q and other research we have conducted
with parents, students and educators in privileged contexts (see CURE, 2009; Wells, et. al., 2009) that
this educational choice process – whether it is the choice of schools or course selections within schools –
promotes anxiety and stress as these parents worry that their children are susceptible to downward
mobility if they do not have the “right” educational credentials. This anxiety seems to have only
increased in the last three decades as society as a whole has become far less equal and educational
policies have stressed outcomes and competition above all else (Jager-Hyman, 2008; Lareau, 2000;
Wells, et. al., 2009).
30
Anxiety and Advantage: Getting White Kids into the “Best” Schools
In part because of their privilege, therefore, the school choice process is perceived by these
parents to be extremely high stakes. Thus, they work hard at it, invest a great deal of energy in it, and
use their advantages in anyway they can to make sure their children end up in the schools that are
perceived – by them and others in their social networks – to be superior. Meanwhile, the kindergarten
choice process in District Q clearly favors those who have the time and resources to make the system
work for them.
As one white upper-middle class parent explained, applying to and choosing an elementary
school took “a lot of work.” In fact, she said that when she and her spouse calculated the amount of
time and energy it took them to attend all the public and private school tours, open houses, interviews,
etc. it was “tantamount to each of us taking a month off of work… and then of course there’s all the
money involved with the application fees and to test and everything so it’s a ton of work.”
And after all that work, this parent ended up putting her daughter in a private school because of
the anxiety and stress associated with waiting to hear from the District Q G&T admissions office: “I think
in hindsight if we had stuck it out we could have probably gotten into [the local school’s] G&T if we had
kind of bit our nails until July or something like that and stayed on the wait list and called and nagged
people and so forth...”
Ultimately, the District Q kindergarten choice system, even after the changes made to increase
access, continued to reward parents who have the most time and resources to put into it. As one
mother noted, “every system is going to reward people that have more time and energy to commit to
it…there is someone I know that didn’t get into the G&T that they wanted, and they campaigned to get
the spot and…maybe that’s fair because maybe then they will be very committed parents.”
We were told in interviews about affluent families going to all sorts of extremes to get their
children into the schools of their choice, including moving to new apartments – or at least signing leases
31
on new apartments – that are in the attendance zone of one of only two desirable “neighborhood” nonG&T schools in the district (School G). It is clear that parents with resources will go to extremes to make
sure their children get into one of the “best” schools and that doing so requires a lot of work and
produces a great deal of stress. Furthermore, we saw that their social networks both assist them in
getting needed information and increase their stress levels. The stress in particular pushes them further
from making choices that reflect the value they place on school and classroom diversity.
In terms of the ways in which white, higher income parents use their networks to their
advantage, it is clear that the parents we interviewed tapped into every available resource – e.g. their
private preschools, their own education and/or expertise, their personal and professional colleagues or
friends, etc. For instance, most of these parents talked about private consultants or experts who gave
talks at their children’s private and often exclusive preschools. Many such consultants have backgrounds
in education or educational research. According to one affluent white parent whose child attended an
expensive private preschool, the kindergarten choice consultant for the preschool worked with the
parents and e-mailed memos to them about the logistics of the school choice process. “She goes to
these school board meetings and learns about what’s going on and then reports out on that such and
such is going to happen next Friday…”
Another very affluent white parent, with a family income of more than $200,000 noted that she
made the initial choice of which schools to apply to based on a combination of factors, including on-line
research of school websites and the NYC “Insideschools” website, as well as “word of mouth”
information from other parents and talking to the preschool director. This parent noted that “At our
preschool every family had a one on one sit down with the director where she talked about the child and
what places would be good fits and offered her opinion on where would be the best places and you
know most appropriate places to apply and that was an important source of information as well.”
32
These affluent parents whose children attended exclusive preschools recognize their advantage
in the kindergarten choice process. As one mother explained:
…I think that if your child doesn’t go to preschool then there’s a definite
disadvantage there, and preschool is something you have to pay for so
again the classism is starting right off the bat because children who don’t
go to preschool because the parents can’t afford it doesn’t mean they
aren’t necessarily smart. There’s a huge gap if you go to Montessori
which costs a lot or going to daycare which costs nothing and in between
there’s barely choice. That’s the problem in my eyes. If you don’t go to
preschool, then who fills it [pre-school teacher recommendations for
gifted education] out, and if you don’t have teachers that are
nurturing…Then that’s classism right from the beginning because if the
child is not in a good preschool where they are getting nurtured then
how is the teacher going to write a great, raving recommendation.
In addition to having this pre-school advantage, many of the more affluent white District Q
parents attended special district workshops or hired their own kindergarten admissions coaches to help
with both pubic and/or private school applications. But perhaps the most important resource these
parents had was their social network of other parents going through the same process, if not at exactly
the same time then close to their timeframe. As one very affluent white parent noted: “Yeah, and you
know conversations on the playground with parents from different schools. That I found more helpful
than any information provided from the district.”
It was this “parental grape vine” or “playground chat” that taught these parents the most about
the changes occurring in the school choice system, how to fill out the application, what the deadlines
were, etc. According to one upper-class white father, the school choice process is “in the air that we
breathe…You meet people in the playground. Your friends have kids. You read articles in the paper.
You find your way to websites, so I would say there’s no one way that we found out… “
Parents in this school district, particularly white and more affluent parents, state that while they
certainly use the resources and institutional supports, they also rely a great deal on other parents for
information. As a middle-class white parent explained, her network of playground parents was critical in
this school choice process -- “it was all that anybody could talk about for awhile…,” she said.
33
No doubt many parents in District Q – of all racial/ethnic backgrounds – talk to other parents –
albeit often parents of the same racial/ethnic backgrounds. But there is also an understanding among
the more privileged residents of District Q that the more affluent, predominantly white parental social
networks provide the most helpful information and thereby exacerbate the class and race advantage.
In fact, these networks are so powerful and important in giving the parents involved in them a clear
advantage in the kindergarten choice process that when one upper-middle class mother was asked why
District Q changed the kindergarten admissions process to a lottery system, she replied: “To make the
system more transparent, make it easier for people if English wasn’t their first language, make it easier
for everybody to get in and make it a system I guess they would say that people like me can’t, you know,
learn to navigate and use to our advantage…”
When asked whether the new lottery system would be more fair than the system it replaced,
another affluent white mother noted that she did not think it was ever going to be fair, “I think there’s
always going to be a situation that the people who have the most resources will be able to get the most
benefit from the system because they’ll know when to apply.”
Thus, despite the changes in the kindergarten choice process and efforts to make it more
egalitarian and less reliant on parents’ private resources, these more affluent white parents maintained
their advantage -- and their high anxiety – when it came to getting their children into the “good” schools
and programs. They had information and insights other parents lacked because of their powerful social
networks. Furthermore, these networks continued to play a role in defining what a “good” school or
program was, often times based more on who was enrolled in each school as opposed to what was
taught. In this way, these powerful upper-middle-class and mostly white social networks of New York
parents, much like those that Holme (2002) wrote about in her study of affluent parents, play a critical
role in constructing the possibilities of what is worth choosing. Echoing the words of Mannheim (1936),
noted above, that people do not think or make decisions as individuals, but rather as groups with a
34
similar “style of thought” in response to “typical situations characterizing their common position”
(emphasis added, p.3).
Basically, what we learn from the more affluent, white District Q parents is that the kindergarten
choice process and the decisions that these parents make about where to apply and where to enroll
their children represents a “typical situation” for people in their “common position” who share a similar
“style of thought” about “good” schools. For instance, many of the white parents with strong social
networks spoke about the handful of G&T programs and general education programs that they heard
were higher quality choices. In fact, one white, upper-class father said, he knew that there were
basically “four or five public schools” that people he interacted with talked about and were happy with.
When his child was not able to attend any of those programs, he opted for a private school.
This process of socially constructing desirable and undesirable schools with their peers and
through their networks, raises the parents’ stress levels even more because it limits their choices to
those schools and programs deemed to be “ok” in the eyes of similarly positioned parents. Knowing
other similarly positioned parents who had chosen the same school was important to these privileged
white parents. This, as we noted, pushes all parents in their “common position” further away from
racially diverse schools. As one upper-middle-class white parent noted, her main goal in choosing a
kindergarten was to “make sure’ her son is in class with children “from families that get their kids to do
well.”
Thus, parents talk a great deal about schools’ reputations. By this, they mean the schools’
reputations among similarly situated peers. As one upper-middle-class white parent noted several times
in our conversation with her, she choose the “best school” for her daughter in terms of its “reputation”
among people she knows, her friends. This word of mouth rating of schools based on their reputations
leads to a limited universe of schools deemed acceptable within the networks. This small number of
public schools that are the most popular and seen as desirable by the higher income, white parents
35
creates an anxious, competitive situation that also infuses the social network with another level of
anxiety. In the last portion of this findings section we discuss what happens when these affluent white
parents get caught between their own fears of falling from their high status economic positions and
their espoused beliefs in greater racial diversity in public schools.
Making Privileged, if Imperfect Choices:
Where the Lack of Diverse Schools meets the “Fear of Falling”
The lack of viable racially diverse choices combined with their “fear of falling” and the ways in
which their social network feeds that fear means that the kindergarten school choice process in District
Q pushes upper-middle-class, mostly white parents to make choices that they think protect their
privilege. This means they are pushed toward predominantly white and relatively affluent private
schools, public school G&T programs, or basically two “viable” (according to them anyway) diverse
public schools – one District-wide magnet (School R) or one neighborhood school with a more diverse
attendance zone (School G).
In fact, we know that for the parents we interviewed, about 25 percent enrolled their children in
private schools and another 25 percent enrolled their children in G&T programs that may or may not be
housed in their local, zoned school. Another nearly 33 percent chose a seat in a public school (non-G and
T program) outside of their catchment zone that they applied to through the District Q lottery. Most of
these choosers picked the very popular School G. Another 10 percent attended their zoned or
neighborhood school, 5 percent ended up at a special exam school in another district, and 7 percent
enrolled their children in the racially/ethnically diverse magnet school that does not have a segregated
G&T versus “general” program and draws students from across District Q. The remaining 1 percent of
parents chose charter schools for their children.
When we break these results down further by race and class, we found that 32 percent of white
parents chose private schools, 32 percent chose G&T programs, and 29 percent chose either an out-ofzone regular public school (most likely School G) the diverse magnet school. Not surprisingly, the
36
majority of white, upper-class parents with annual family incomes of more than $200,000 a year chose
private schools; most of the upper-middle-class white parents ($100,000 to 200,000), meanwhile, chose
G&T programs; and the middle-class white parents ($50,000 to 100,000) were about evenly divided
between choosing out of zone schools or G&T programs for their children.
While we don’t have detailed information on the racial/ethnic or SES make up of the schools
these students ended up in, we do know that, for the most part, the private schools and the G&T
programs have a much higher proportion of white and relatively affluent students than the District Q
population as a whole. Meanwhile, the zoned school options, as we noted above, are mostly either
predominantly white (this is the case of one school, School H) or predominantly black and Latino. Only
one of the zoned neighborhood schools (School G) and the District-wide magnet school of choice (School
R) are racially/ethnically diverse at the school and classroom level.
Thus, even as they voice frustration about the G&T classrooms and the segregation they produce
and say they want diversity, the vast majority of parents we studied end up “choosing” schools and
programs based more on their anxiety, fed by their social network, about which schools are “good,”
than on the value they place on goals such as diversity. But to be fair, it is the case that these parents
have extremely limited options to do otherwise. The diverse schools are too few and far between in this
district – consisting of only one magnet school (School R) and one zoned school (School G) really. Thus,
the “problem” is in great part due to the lack of policies, opportunities and choices provided by the
District and the larger NYC School System.
Yet, at the same time, the privileged parents we studied do play a role in legitimizing and
perpetuating the situation by buying into the use of race as a signifier of good or bad schools – e.g.
automatically considering predominantly white schools and programs to be better in terms of academic
rigor and challenge. In fact, one of the main themes that emerged from the parent interviews in this
study, which is consistent with the school choice literature in general, is that race is central to the ways
37
in which parents make sense of their school choices. The tendency is always toward schools with larger
percentages of white students and affluent students – and this is not only true when white parents are
choosing (see Lankford and Wyckoff,2000; Prins, 2007; Fiske, 2002; Saporito and Lareau, 1999). The
central problem with such sense-making and the resulting decision-making is that it creates self-fulfilling
prophesies of poor, predominantly black and Latino schools that generally lack the teaching staff,
curriculum, expectations or school culture that more affluent parents demand.
As a result of this vicious cycle, such race-driven parental choices are logical at some level, given
what we know about the relationship between racial segregation, educational inequality and
concentrated poverty. Yet, when we examine this sense-making in progress, on the ground, we see the
missed opportunities in school choice policies that could have tapped into parents’ interest and demand
for more diverse, equal and challenging educational environments for their children. But when policies
designed to racially balance schools do not exist, as we know from District Q and other literature on
school choice, and parents are left to their own devices to navigate the racialized educational system. In
this context, many – particularly white middle-class and affluent parents – are conflicted over their
blatantly race-conscious decision making in a system that relies on their colorblindness. Frustration with
this process sets off a whole set of coping mechanisms that are problematic on several levels.
Rationalizations: Defining “Good” and “Bad” Schools based on Race, Class and Place
One way in which the white parents we interviewed dealt with the cognitive dissonance or
double consciousness of supporting diversity while enrolling their children in segregated programs and
schools was to buy into simple definitions and solutions to a more complicated problem. Indeed, a small
number of parents we interviewed did not even tour some of the schools that they listed on the
kindergarten lottery application if they heard that they were good choices from friends or parents from
their preschool. More common, however, was that many parents did not tour their zoned school for the
exact opposite reason, because they heard bad things about it from their friends or family. We also
38
found that the majority of zoned schools that parents were opting not to enroll their children in –
whether they had toured them or not -- were between 70-92 percent children of color.
Some parents only applied to the G&T or lottery as a backup in case they did not get their
children in a private school. One, white upper-class mother explained, “I was looking at private schools
too, and I just wanted to make sure I had an alternative and see how I could do”
One popular argument from parents in the double conscious state was in favor of making the
“exclusive” G&T programs more widely available at every school – an idea that jibes with the Klein
administration’s new G&T policy. They argued this based on the resources that the parents of “gifted”
students (as opposed to other parents) can and do bring to the schools. The implication of this from our
interviews was that G&T students and parents are “better” because they have higher test scores, more
volunteer time and they give more money, on average, than their counterparts in general education.
In fact, several of the parents we interviewed thought that there should be G&T’s at every school
because they lift up the general education classrooms since there is extra money that is brought in by
G&T parents. One white father explained this sentiment as follows: “a rising tide floats all boats. The
whole school benefits from having a successful G&T program and this is why I believe there should be a
sibling policy in a school because it’s senseless to carve up a family. The school benefits so dramatically
from having a family that’s involved in a school.”
As one mother explained it: “[B]y definition the kids that are in G&T, their parents have gone
through the trouble to get them into the G&T, so they’re at least sufficiently involved…I just think it
makes a big difference…”
Another white, upper-class mother also thought it was “bizarre” that parents “are turned off by
the G&T programs because the ethnic makeup of the G&T classrooms are the opposite of the non-G&T
classrooms,” although she admitted that she was surprised on the G&T school tours that most of the
39
parents, “80 to 90 percent,” were white while the student demographics in the schools were mostly
black and Hispanic.
As mentioned earlier, some parents thought that parental involvement levels in a school
determined if a school was good or not, in terms of resources that parents brought to the school,
fundraising and volunteering in the school. One white parent when asked why she decided to
participate in the lottery said, “The zoned school was overwhelmingly Hispanic and black and again it’s a
class and race issue and because of that I’m sure because there isn’t as much parental involvement the
school isn’t as good. And I know that in [a certain school] one of the reasons why it’s such an excellent
school is the level of parental involvement and that has to do with it’s in a good neighborhood with fairly
affluent parents who have the time and money to do a lot…”
The Lack of Really Good Choices
Meanwhile, the three G&T programs (in Schools A, B, and C) that most parents talked about and
put down on their applications were all highly segregated by race and class, and most of the students
who were accepted were white, upper income children. The contrast between these programs and
most, but not all, of the other available options in terms of the racial and social class make up of the
students is striking. As we noted above, beyond these three popular G&T programs, there were, at the
time, only two/three other schools in the district that were accepting more than a handful of choice
students and were attracting white, upper-middle-class students (Schools G, R, and sometimes K).
One white, upper-class mother replied,
…I really get the feeling that whoever dreamt up this process in
District Q did not actually go and talk to anyone because if they did
they would have found out that there are basically three G&T
programs that are very popular and the others are not and everyone
applied to the same three schools and that’s why nobody got in. So,
they’re trying to make the process more egalitarian and the net
effect was exactly the opposite…
Many parents said they had no choice because if they declined the spot they were offered then
they were put at the bottom of the waiting list. Some parents thought there should be more quality
40
schools-- “It definitely wasn’t enough for me because I ended up somewhere where I didn’t want to be.
If there were more choices, then we would have been able to have a better choice. The schools were
over subscribed, you know, the thing is you don’t really have a choice.”
As one very affluent white mother noted: “And frankly I think they just need more schools, they
need better schools and less crowded schools and that’s kind of the crux of it then you wouldn’t need so
much, then you could kind of spread kids around a little bit, but I don’t know. Because people are either
going into the gifted programs or private schools, and then what’s left in the neighborhoods, which is
not much.”
Echoing that sentiment, yet another District Q white parent noted: “I think more schools are
needed- more actual schools, more physical building, more options should be available. It was a very
stressful process that people had to go through.”
Furthermore, this same parent noted, “We’re exclusive in our G&T and we don’t let anybody that
has any racial diversity in, and there has to be something in the middle.”
As we noted above, an upper-middle-class white parent whose child ended up in an almost allwhite gifted program noted that the school populations should be more mixed up, noted that… “it
would be nice if I guess if schools weren’t so heavily one way or the other, if it there would be a more
even distribution of those different groups.”
In addition to their frustration with the highly segregated nature of the public schools, a small,
but possibly growing number of parents in District Q were turned off by the mandated testing and
district-wide curriculum, which they felt could “stifle creativity” and represented “way too much
bureaucracy in public schools.” These mandated tests and curriculum distinguished the public from the
more elite and autonomous private schools that many District Q parents can afford. For instance, one
affluent parent described the private school his child ended up in, comparing it to the public school
41
options. He noted that the private school offered smaller classes, more racial/ethnic diversity at the
classroom level, and “no focus on testing at all.”
This parent, whose children are bi-racial, Asian and white, noted that the private school is more
racially diverse at the school and classroom level than the public schools he toured. “You know, because
of the testing and the state-wide curriculum [in the public schools], and the diversity is my own
particular thing, and I do support it for all kids, but it’s particularly important for mine.”
Policy Recommendations and Implications:
If the DOE would Build it, Some Would Surely Come
What is painfully clear about the above themes and findings to emerge from our interview data is
that the way in which school choice policies are written, regulated and implemented has huge
implications for the kinds of outcomes they will foster – both in terms of their short term effects on
school-level racial diversity and their long term effects on political support for public education. We do
know that race conscious school choice policies, while not perfect, are much more successful at creating
diverse and high quality public schools and a more balanced and equal educational system (see Holmes
and Wells, 2008).
We argue based on our research and our experiences as parents of public school students in
District Q that there are two clear policy recommendations that should be taken seriously by those with
the power to make change:
1. More racially diverse, non-G and T schools and programs within schools need to be created
and promoted. For instance, more schools like the highly popular district-wide magnet school, School R,
should be developed.
2. The District should implement a controlled choice plan that would do away with zoned,
neighborhood schools and require all students to choose a school through the lottery system before
entering kindergarten. We contend that the choices district officials made in the design of the new
lottery by keeping it voluntary on the part of the families and allowing parents to choose their
42
neighborhood school benefited the white, upper-class families who could stay in their neighborhood
schools and not participate in the lottery. Moving forward, the District could use such a controlled
choice program to better balance the schools in terms of parents’ income and zip codes – both proxies
for race in District Q and permissible as choice criteria after the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the
Louisville and Seattle school desegregation cases.
Both of these policies would promote rather than inhibit the creation of more racial balance
within an incredibly diverse school district. Furthermore, according to our interview data, if the district
were to create more such diverse and undivided options for parents, more of the white, upper-middleclass parents would choose to put their children in public as opposed to private schools for kindergarten.
Such an influx of families with a great deal of political clout in the city would be beneficial for the District
and the public school system as a whole.
Ironically, instead of creating more racially diverse and dynamic schools that do not divide
students based on IQ tests administered at age 4, the New York Public Schools Chancellor is moving
forward with the effort to expand the current G&T program, with its heavy reliance on a single IQ test as
the main criterion for admission. While the new policy has eliminated the preschool teacher
recommendation as a criterion for admission to a G&T program, which is helpful to those who were not
able to attend such a program, the new policy, which still relies on such a narrow measure of
“giftedness” has not yet, two years after its implementation, solved the racial gap in G&T enrollment.
Ironically, when the Chancellor created the new policy, he described the existing G&T classrooms
district-wide, “as a hodgepodge of offerings with varying, and often opaque, admissions criteria that
tend to favor children with well-connected parents” (Gootman, 2008). He also stated that his goal was
to increase the G&T enrollment of low-income students and set up a system whereby poor students
could take the test for free. Yet the new policy still measures students’ “giftedness” via the same
narrow measures required students to score in the top 10th percentile on the IQ test to be eligible for
43
the program. This meant that system-wide, the poorer districts would lose G&T seats because few of
their students score high enough to make that cut off. Meanwhile, in more affluent districts such as
District Q, the new policy doubled the number of eligible G&T students from 192 accepted in 2007 to
310 students in 2008 (Gootman, 2008).
In fact, many of the indicators of G&T versus general education inequality worsened under this
new policy. For instance, as of June 2008, 39 percent of G&T students citywide were from the wealthiest
– and thus, also the whitest neighborhoods – in NYC. That was up from 25 percent in prior years.
Overall, across the city, while only 18 percent of K and 1st grade students are white, a full 52 percent of
the G&T students are white. Meanwhile, in one of the City’s poorest school districts, 85 percent of the
students were eligible for free and reduced priced lunch, but only 2.8 percent scored high enough to get
into a G&T program (Borland, 2009). Conversely, in District Q, 45 percent of all incoming kindergarten
students qualify for G&T programs —the highest percentage across all of the NYC Community School
Districts (NYCDOE, 2009).
Problems with the new G&T distict-wide policy:
a. The Chancellor’s desired goal was to increase the enrollment of low-income students by
making the G&T test free, having all students tested and not just the students that had
parents with the money and information about the tests-- but instead the opposite outcome
has occurred with the highest enrollments in the most affluent and whitest neighborhoods.
b. On the surface the new policy might seem more egalitarian since every student is tested for
G&T, but since it uses a “one size fits all” approach by setting the cutoff score so high, it does
not give lower income, children of color an equal chance of G&T admission.
A 2008 article in a local newspaper that serves the area of New York City that is the heart of
District Q reported that for the 2008 school year one-fourth of the parents who were offered a G&T seat
turned it down for a variety of reasons, including the belief that “gifted programming isn’t the right
44
approach to education. Others won’t look beyond what are perceived as top-choice gifted programs, or
they will reject G&T for lack of student diversity…[also an] overly competitive atmosphere, a watereddown curriculum, or disorganization at the Department of Education…” (Raschka, 2008, p. 14).
Additionally, the article cites a national specialist in gifted education as saying that an, “entirely test
driven admissions process will only exacerbate the problem of equity and racial imbalance” since it is
very hard to identify lower income, minority children as being “gifted” using tests alone (Raschka, 2008).
Additional changes have been made to the G&T admissions process for the 2009-10 school year,
none of which address the narrow criteria being used in selecting students or the racial apartheid that
these programs create within schools that have them. Nor is there any sign that officials in District Q
plan to do anything about the segregation across the zoned schools through a form of controlled choice.
Meanwhile, we know that the lottery for the 2008-09 school year consisted of 452 lottery applications
with only 302 seats available, which resulted in the most popular schools being filled and 76 seats were
not filled because they were in undesirable schools (Robledo, 2008).
Our analysis of District Q’s qualitative data on how white parents make sense of their school
choices and how that meaning relates to race within seemingly “colorblind” school choice policies has
illustrated the subtle, micro-level mechanisms that create, perpetuate and exacerbate racial segregation
and inequality in education. It’s not surprising, given the lack of choices that the District Q officials have
made available to them, that these mostly privileged parents 1. struggle with the choices they make and
that 2. given the options available, they usually end up making the choice that protects their privilege
and thus maintains the segregation and inequality.
Yet, at the same time, it is clear to us that even small amendments to laissez-faire school choice
policies could appeal to white parents’ intuition about the importance of school-level diversity and work
against some of the forces that continue to push the system toward more segregation. But those with
the power to make change within District Q and New York City more broadly must be open to learning
45
from this study and other indicators of what is happening in the local district to perpetuate segregation
and inequality. The missed opportunities for providing better choice for parents in NYC and District Q
are obvious. Now, those who are able to do something about it must acknowledge these opportunities
and move this District and the City system toward the 21st Century.
46
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