Abstract / Excerpt
“School choice” proponents argue that offering parents public school options other than traditional neighborhood schools empowers them to secure an optimal school for their children. But choice does not remedy the core social problem: that racial residential segregation enables White parents to have a higher-quality choiceset of schools than their Black counterparts. In our study of the Cleveland, Ohio, Metropolitan Area, we find Black parents are more likely than White parents to live in neighborhoods where schools fail to meet state academic proficiency standards, motivating Black parents to pursue “choice” schools more often.
About the Author
Angela M. SimmsRacial Residential Segregation and School Choice
Racial Residential Segregation and School Choice
Phylon (1960-)
Clark Atlanta University
Education Inequality, School Selection, Cleveland
Article
25 pages
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Citation
“I will assign this text in my Critical Pedagogies course as a case study for demonstrating how systems of oppression are experienced by individual Black parents. Angela Simms and Elizabeth Talbert showcase how socio-historical racism affects black and white parents’ efforts to procure a quality education for their children in an Ohio suburb. They connect major structural systems of inequity--residential segregation, residential mobility and school segregation—to individual choices to demonstrate that the freedom to choose schools is not freedom from systems of oppression but instead produces a highly racialized ‘parenting tax.’ This case study provides a tangible example of how one education policy is experienced so inequitably by white and Black parents because it situates individual struggle within socio-historical racist systems.”
- Jennifer Rosales, Vice President for Inclusion and Engaged Learning &
Chief Diversity Officer