Unwritten ground rules of school choice: Excavating capital as a regulator of access to educational goods

Abstract

District leaders in school choice contexts tend to overlook the many hidden costs of selecting schools in terms of mobility, time, liquidity, and labor. Meanwhile, a body of literature on school choice policies and cultural, social, and political capital shows that middle-class parents use the resources they possess to get the school access they want. In this study, I critically examine the complex interplay between school choice policies and forms of capital. This analysis extends our empirical understanding of the political dimensions of families’ school choices—the way parent resources, relationships, and strategies determine “who gets what, when, and how” (Laswell, 1936) in terms of schooling opportunities, and way these policies help structure disproportionate school access. By attending to families’ affordances of cultural, social, and political capital in studies of school choice, authorities may be more likely to design choice supports that address some demand-side inequities.