Parents Tend to Choose Schools Based on Their Own Educational Experience
Patterns of segregation may repeat if parents continually choose schools like the ones they attended.
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The is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
Faced with a for where to enroll their children in school, based on their own educational experience as students.
That鈥檚 what we found for a study published in March 2023 in Social Currents.
Historically, parents have turned to their and to help them choose a school for their children.
However, when we analyzed interviews with a diverse sample of 60 parents from the Dallas metropolitan area, we found that about one-third of them used their own experiences in school to narrow their options before they gathered other information about schools.
If parents had a positive educational experience as children, they frequently narrowed their options to the same type of school that they attended, whether that be a private, magnet or traditional public school. Their hope was to replicate this positive experience for their kids. For example, Janice, a Black mother of two, explained, 鈥淭hey鈥檙e in private school mainly because I went to private school.鈥�
Although parents of all backgrounds and income levels used this strategy, it was most common among white parents, who typically enrolled their children in private or suburban public schools, which they attended themselves. We refer to this as 鈥渆xperience-motivated replication.鈥�
Virginia, a white mother of two, explained that her husband, John, 鈥渏ust assumed our kids are going to public schools鈥� because the suburban schools he attended were such 鈥渨onderful public schools.鈥� To replicate John鈥檚 experience the couple was in the process of leaving the city to buy a home in the suburbs.
Similarly, Rachel, a white mother of three, quickly narrowed her school options to consider only private Catholic schools because of her own positive experience. Rachel鈥檚 husband told us: 鈥淭he kids go to the same private Catholic school that she went to.鈥�
In contrast, we find that when parents had negative educational experiences, they typically sought to avoid enrolling their children in the type of school they attended, eliminating those schools from consideration. This strategy, which we call 鈥渆xperience-motivated avoidance,鈥� was common among Black parents in our sample who felt underserved in city public schools as children.
For instance, Toni, a Black mother of three, shared: 鈥淚 went to a public school and I don鈥檛 think that the teachers really care about the kids鈥� education. That鈥檚 me personally. I didn鈥檛 get that one on one.鈥� Based on this negative experience, she did not consider their zoned Dallas public school. Instead, Toni focused on charter school options for her children. She ultimately enrolled them in a charter school near her home.
Why it matters
Where families decide to enroll their children in school not only influences the educational resources available to their child, but also shapes broader patterns of racial and socioeconomic segregation in America鈥檚 schools.
The school selection process plays a key role in how educational inequalities span generations, especially when white parents rely on their own experiences to inform the choices they make for their children.
For example, when white families move out of the city to enroll their children in suburban public schools, or consider only private schools like those they attended, these choices replicate historic patterns of white flight. It also helps explain why white families tend to be overrepresented in and suburban public schools.
Conversely, when we examine how parents鈥� negative experiences as students influence which schools they consider for their children, it may help us to better understand why, for instance, increasingly choose charter schools.
What still isn鈥檛 known
While this study shines light on one key aspect of how parents choose schools for their children, we believe it is important to understand all of the ways parents choose schools. Examining the choice process for diverse populations of families in districts where school choice is available can reveal the full set of strategies parents rely on to select schools.
This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .
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