School Choice and Culture Wars in the Classroom: What Different Parents Seek from Education.

PARENTS; EDUCATIONAL change; DECISION making; SEGREGATION; RACE discrimination; SCHOOLS; SOCIAL status

The article presents a study which analyzed parents' preferences of several different educational issues. Most current proposals for school reform seek to shift power to parents, thereby bringing new actors into the educational decision process. As these reforms proceed, concern is growing that different types of parents' values about education will lead to stratification and segregation in the schools. Using survey data from two suburban and two inner-city school districts, it investigates parents' preferences for different aspects of educations. It is found that parents of different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds do find different school attributes important, but that these differences are not the ones emphasized by most current literature. Parents of lower socioeconomic status and parents who identify themselves as racial minorities indeed want something different from their schools than do parents who are white or who have higher education levels. These parents are more likely to value schools that perform the bedrock function of providing a safe environment in which the fundamentals of education are delivered.