(*substitute “Camden Public Schools” for any urban district experiencing corporate takeover through the influx of CMO operated charter schools)
Though counterintuitive, schools making academic gains, to city parents, is not synonymous with making a school, “better”. Here, I illustrate that urban districts that are subject to privatization through a growing presence of corporate charter schools may NOT be addressing urban parents’ (that may have genuine school-choice) desires in seeking out a “better” school. Though Camden’s public school district is the focus here, the realities that urban districts have been slow to adapt to economic realities of working-class and poor parents is largely universal – and is costing us. As a remedy, urban districts need to conduct their own Needs Assessment for parents and make it a priority to produce a district that not only educates young people but is also accommodating to parent’s day-to-day and economic realities.
The Urgent Need to Adapt to the Shifting Landscape of Urban Public Education:
“Better” is Complicated
The common understanding of “better” schools motivating parents to choose schools is understood to reference a better academic setting, but this is a not central motivator for school selection. Parent choice by urban parents is more complex than “school quality” (Walsh, 2012)
- Academic performance of an entire school came behind other parental considerations like class size, programs for Special Education students, school safety, distance, and location
- Hear-say Matters!: the lower parents are on the SES scale, the more influence word of mouth about a school from friends and school staff has
- How other parents, teachers, and administrators talk about their school matters in what parents think about schools and where they send their child in a choice setting
- In Hartford, CT, an all-choice District as of 2006, parents are influenced by the home to school distance, as well as their personal experiences inside a school, relationships and “feel”
- Minority parents of limited income place a premium on relationship building and safety ahead of academics in school selection. “Feel” is nuanced in that some of what is deemed “better” includes things that can be observed at a distance from the naked eye like organized beginning-of-the-day and student dismissal processes, fresh paint, well-manicured outdoors (Taningo, 2006)
- Most school selection is done by mothers, and mothers specifically need to be engaged when promoting schools
- Low-income parents prefer schools that make life easier which can include more meals for students, broader medical and dental coverage/screenings, mental/emotional health monitoring (Harris & Larsen, 2015)
What Parents are seeking is Influenced by the Age of their Child:
What motivates parents to seek one school over another varies depending on the child’s grade. Among both primary and secondary grades, “academic outputs” were not the primary factors in school preference
- The younger the child is more distance/transportation matters and where their siblings attend school
- Parents with children in elementary through middle grades place greater emphasis on extracurriculars like band and sports as well as extended day (before and aftercare) (Bald, 2016)
- Schools with a “C rating” that has free afterschool programs is preferred to “B rated” school with no afterschool programs for younger grades
- Extended day is no small matter in localities where primarily working mother are working low paying hourly jobs
- Dropping students off at school earlier and picking them up later allows for extra hours at work, which means more money for the family
- In that lower SES households pay a higher percentage of their income toward childcare, any way parents can avoid paying this extra-expenditure saves money which makes schools that do offer extended day (before and aftercare along with meals) all the more attractive from a money-saving perspective
- Parents of High School students do care about distance and transportation but not to the extent of younger students
- A school with a “C rating” that has extra-curriculars like marching band, dance teams, a wide variety of sports teams and other programs around post-secondary prep is preferred to a “B rated” school with fewer extra-curriculars – in many instances, building academics and curriculum comes secondary to seemingly non-instructional matters (Harris & Larsen, 2015)
Recommendations:
- Remember, we (urban schools) NEED students in our schools and in our District as that keeps buildings open and all of us employed
- Reassess and Rethink what CCSD believes motivates parental school selection – research proves it’s not what we’ve heard; that’s not to say academics don’t matter at all to parents, just not to the extent commonly communicated
- Distance and Transportation ALWAYS Matter*
- Become more parent-lifestyle friendly in recognizing that our schools need to align with the reality most parents in Camden live; mostly female-led households where she, the primary earner, is working at an hourly job where more hours equals more money; and where the less parents have to spend on childcare the more money stays in the house. By extension, any school that is compatible with that economic reality becomes more desirable than those that don’t regardless of a school’s academic prowess
- CCSD Discretionary Spending should reflect parental school choice desires. Where possible, instead of spending exorbitant amounts of money on academic programs, perhaps that money would be better spent on Before and After Care for primary grades, and after school/extracurricular programming for secondary grades
- This would represent an investment in spending to gain students in order to add to our District budget and change the operating reality that public schools are not willfully responsive to the realities of economically struggling parents
