University of Cambridge

Faculty of Education

The cultural politics of middle-classes and schooling: Parental choices and practices to secure school (e)quality

in advanced neoliberal times

A US case-study

Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir

Darwin College

Supervisor: Prof Diane Reay

This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Declaration of authenticity

This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the

outcome of work done in collaboration. It is not substantially the same as any that I

have previously submitted, or will be submitting, for a degree or diploma or any other

work or qualification at any university. The document length does not exceed the

work limit as given by the Degree Committee of the Faculty of Education.

This dissertation does not exceed 80,000 words, excluding abstract,

acknowledgement, appendices, footnotes, bibliography or other primary source

material.

Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir

September 2013

Abstract

There is a growing literature focussed on middle-class parents who resist normative school-choice behaviour by enrolling their children in schools ‘lacking’ or challenging middle-class ideals. This focus has its origins in critical scholarship which explores how the British white middle-classes negotiate their class advantage in multi-ethnic ‘low-achieving’ schools (Crozier et al., 2006; Reay, Crozier & James, 2011; Reay et al., 2007) using an extension of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework for analysis (Reay, 2004; Dillabough, 2004; Lareau & Weiniger, 2003; Sayer, 2005). Inspired by their research, the data from this critical qualitative case study was mainly collected from white and multi-ethnic professionals in a university town in the United States of America who enrolled their children in an elementary school which had become under-enrolled and demonized as a ‘failing school’ (henceforth Osborne-school).

In order to understand the political context of the choices faced by the parents enrolling their children in the Osborne-school, the competing equity discourses surrounding education in the USA were explored, that is the neo-liberal discourse promoting free school-choice and organizational reforms (Chubb & Moe, 1990), as well as the integration discourse which is a call for racial and economic integration among schools (Kahlenberg, 2001). These policies were played out upon Osborne-school during the research period from 2005-2008 and reproduced a concentration of disadvantaged families in the Osborne community, but at the same time the school attracted a critical mass of middle-class activists, both among parents and staff, to Osborne.

My main participants consisted of 36 families, thereof 31 of middle-classes, who all have in common that they deliberately or by policy forces, considered Osborne-school as a choice for their children. This group included constrained choosers through the federal integration policy who 1) never attended or left Osborne-community during the research period, or 2) integrated to Osborne and stayed throughout, or 3) were deliberate choosers of Osborne through open enrolment or residential right. The main reasons the constrained choosers gave for leaving or avoiding Osborne were a lack of accumulative effects of privilege within Osborne-community followed by a lack of cultural familiarity and adjustment. The parents who stayed throughout the research period deviated more than the constrained leavers and non-comers from middle-class normativity in terms of race, history, the marital and occupational status of the mother, or the ‘special learning needs’ of their child. In interviews, these parents emphasized the importance of a diverse, child-centred, democratic and caring school community forming critically engaged and equity-oriented students, yet they were simultaneously affected by advanced neo-liberal policies. They were driven by ideals of motherhood (Griffith & Smith, 2005; Reay, 1998; Vincent, 2010) and exchange values as presumed quality in education is unavoidably intersected with advantage in the social context of the learning community (Anyon, 2008; Bourdieu 1989). Analysis of these interviews revealed the intersection of racialized, gendered and classed contradictions that these parents encountered in their challenging of elitist school choice models, which resulted in emotional costs (Reay, 2008) and ethical dilemmas (Sayer, 2005).

The present study offers a deeper understanding of the impact of neoliberalization in education than previous studies in the field have done. It uncovers subtle differences among middle-class identities in the US with respect to educational choices.

Acknowledgements

This PhD-process was a journey of transformations, physically between three countries, and

intellectually towards a better understanding of privilege. As Bourdieu pointed out “sociology

frees us from the illusion of freedom” but at the same time it opens up an opportunity to

understand privilege and the power of the privileged to transform or reproduce the self and

the structure. The greatest of the opportunities this process has allowed me is the good

fortune to have been supervised by Diane Reay, one of the leading scholars in critical

research on social justice and education policy. Long before I had the courage to send her an

email to ask if she could supervise me, I had read her papers and books with enthusiasm and

admiration. Her post at the University of Cambridge was my main motivation for applying to

Cambridge. After becoming a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, luck was still on my

side when I was allocated Jo-Anne Dillabough as my advisor, one of the leading

ethnographers and theorists in critical research. Her advice and critiques were important to

the development of my research questions and during the final stages of my writing process.

I would like to express my gratitude for the time spent together with all the participants in

this research; the families, principal and teachers within the Osborne-community, who can

only be acknowledged by pseudonyms in this thesis. I cannot thank them enough for the time,

reflexivity, honesty and trust they gave me. They made this research possible. Their

interesting situation generated a heavy workload for me confronted with the task of

transcribing 80 interviews. Thanks to all the people who worked for me on the transcriptions.

Thanks to my friends who spent their valuable time proof-reading my English. I want

especially to mention Masayuki Gibson, the musical linguist, who proofread my application to

Cambridge and encouraged me during that process. My utmost gratitude goes to the linguist,

the great salsa and tango dancer and the most lively person I have ever met; Dr Tania

Strahan, who proofread my thesis in all its different stages. Finally I want to thank Emma

Rixon, for her help in the final stage of the proofreading.

I have to mention some of the PhD students from the Education faculty who inspired me

during this process in Cambridge. I would like to thank Jessica Gerrard, Zsolt Lavicza, Sarah

Winfield, Jennifer Saari, Cleonice Puggian, Oakleigh Welply and Olena Fimyar for their

inspiring conversation and friendship. When living in a rational world of theories and

research there is no better way to induce a happy forgetting of the “weight of the world” than

through dancing. My favourite moments of relaxation in Cambridge came from dancing salsa

and tango. Special thanks go to my main dance partners: Zsolt Lavicza, Sven Friedemann,

Ákos Balázs and Piran Kindambi for their improvisational talents on the dance floor.

Due to intermission and living mostly in Iceland during the last phase of writing, I had many

homes when I did stay in Cambridge. Darwin College, with its ethnically diverse graduate

community, was my only permanent social home in Cambridge and there I had many

inspiring conversations about educational systems throughout the world. The community of

Icelanders in Cambridge metropolitan area was of a great help and I want to especially thank

Eyrún María Rúnarsdóttir, Erna Magnúsdóttir and Ásta Björk who offered me a roof over my

head during my temporary stays in Cambridge. Not to mention Bebe Geen, Rosemary

Summers, Grant Geen, Esther Goody and Dr Sara Hennessy, the British landlords during my

stays in Cambridge.

Doctoral study is expensive, especially in the UK, and I am thankful for having received a

scholarship from the Cambridge Overseas Trust to cover the tuition fees and for being able to

count on the Icelandic welfare system with its strong Icelandic Student Loan Fund for the

living expenses. Even so, the situation became untenable after the collapse of the Icelandic

financial system in 2008. In the spring 2009, I accepted an offer to become a Special Adviser

to the Minister of Education in Iceland for Ms Katrín Jakobsdóttir, and intermitted from my

study for two years. That experience gave me invaluable insight into educational policy in

practice and the difficulties that must be faced in fighting against the neoliberalization of the

Nordic welfare system when the state treasury has been robbed from the inside. I want to

thank Katrín for her trust and inspiring political insight.

Turning to the beginning of my doctoral journey, I want to go on with my gratitude list by

thanking Professor Guðný Guðbjörnsdóttir, my supervisor in my Master’s research, for

encouraging me to take the plunge into doctoral study. I also want to thank the two referees

of my PhD application to the University of Cambridge; Jón Torfi Jónasson and Rannveig

Traustadóttir who are professors at the University of Iceland, and were my mentors and co-

workers during and after my Master’s study. Their positive and grounded arguments for why

I should be accepted as a student at the University of Cambridge were without a doubt

important resources in my application.

Finally, many thanks go to my family who stood behind me the whole time. I can never be

thankful enough to my husband who remained in Reykjavík as a single father during my

journeys to Cambridge after our decision to move back to Iceland. Thanks for your patience,

encouragement and love at all times, Dr Ásgrímur Angantýsson. Our PhD-journey has come to

an end.

1

PART I – BACKGROUNDS, THEORY AND RESEARCH DESIGN

This part of the thesis is a review of the theoretical and conceptual context for my

study starting with a brief introduction. Chapter 2 outlines the scope of the political

landscape concerning education and outcome equity in the US, with its grounding in

the neoliberal agenda. It also contains an overview of recent research on how identity

formation is mediated through school choice. Chapter 3 outlines Bourdieu’s ‘logic of

practice’, which embraces his conceptual framework of habitus, field and capital.

Reflections on critiques from several scholars are offered, which I use to adapt his

concepts, allowing me to establish an appropriate framework to answer my research

questions. Chapter 4 is an explanation of my methodology where I outline how I am

going to answer my research questions, and what I found to be the most appropriate

research paradigm, design and strategy to adopt.

Chapter 1 – Introduction

2

INTRODUCTION Chapter 1

1.1 Aims and objectives

The purpose of this qualitative case study of parental choice politics in one US school

district is to better understand the underlying cultural politics and political

geographies which shape choice practice in elementary education in an intensified

academic cultural setting in the US. The key concerns are the choice processes of

middle-class parents who have in common that they choose or are constrained to

choose a school that, according to the research literature, would not be counted as a

normative choice for people like ‘them’.

The most common trend in school-choice is that of parents choosing schools where

the students are similar to their own children in terms of identity and background

(Ball, 2003a; Saporito & Lareau, 1999). Through the advanced neoliberal agenda in

education policy in which school choice and parental involvement are key elements,

schools have become more class and race segregated (Hursh, 2004; Smith, 2005b;

Stiefel, Schwartz, & Chellman, 2007). School choice has become a new kind of

consumption and a symbolic process in the making of the middle-class subject (Ball,

2003a) in which the working-classes are often deprived of self-making resources and

the ‘right values’ (Skeggs, 2004a), while white middle-class parents best fit the ideal

of the rational chooser: active, responsible and independent (Ball, 2003a; Vincent &

Ball, 2007).

Although attitudes toward integration are generally positive, these attitudes do not

usually translate into action (Brantlinger, 2003) and there are a number of studies

which document middle-class resistance to school integration and diversity

(Brantlinger, 2003; Oakes, Wells, Jones, & Datnow, 1997; Reay, 1996; Wells & Serna,

1996). The focus in this thesis is on the experiences, values and actions of middle-

class parents who deliberately or by force (through policy) defy normative choice

Chapter 1 – Introduction

3

practice by enrolling their children in a predominantly ‘black’ and ‘working-class’,

elementary school. What are the reasons for their constrained or deliberate choice

and what kind of situation and strategies helped them stick with their decisions and

commitments?

1.2 The context of the research

The study was conducted in a university town in the United States where

approximately 60% of all adults have a Bachelor degree or higher. Class and racial

segregation has been an ongoing problem in the district and one school (henceforth

Osborne-school) out of the eight elementary public schools became demonized as the

school to be avoided for its blackness and high poverty1 rate among the students.

During the research period, which was 2005-2008, the school had strong leadership,

a high ratio of well-educated and experienced teachers, and a focus on democratic,

inclusive and multicultural education.

As a rational response to this current class and racial segregation among the schools

in Westfield, the district authorities decided to redraw the lines of the elementary

school attendance zones within the district. The plan was to release space in the two

most crowded schools Norton and Kingsley, by transferring some of their assigned

students into the Osborne-community. This was achieved by changing the district

boundaries (redistricting) and assigning parts of the former zones of Kingsley and

Norton schools to the zones of Osborne (see Error! Reference source not found.)

Norton had a high proportion of affluent professionals, while Kingsley had a high

proportion of intellectuals who mainly worked at the University (US Census Bureau).

According to published rankings, Kingsley was among the highest elementary schools

for achievement in the state where this research is conducted. On the other hand,

Osborne-school was under-enrolled and had the highest proportion of low-income

and black students of all of the eight elementary schools in the district.

1 Public schools in the US are designated as high poverty schools when having 76% or more students

eligible to receive free or reduced priced lunch. Osborne school was a high poverty school throughout

the research period.

Chapter 1 – Introduction

4

Many of the affected parents responded negatively to this redistricting policy. The

plan was that the school’s intake would change dramatically by integrating into

Osborne several streets of the wealthy Norton-neighbourhood and the ‘whiter’ part of

the Sunhill neighbourhood which was a catchment area of the Kingsley-zone. In the

fall of 2005, only four out of 48 (8%) redistricted Norton-students attended Osborne

and 82 of 122 (67%) prospective students transferred from the Sunhill

neighbourhood.

At the beginning of 2007, Osborne was designated by the No Child Left Behind Act

(NCLB2) as a School In need of Improvement (SINI). This prompted the school district

to reconsider their former school choice policy and formally invite all the Osborne

parents to change schools, including those who had only recently transferred to

Osborne. According to NCLB, the parents of the children who failed to achieve up to

the standards given in the NCLB Act received the highest priority for choosing

another school in the district. This particular group was therefore especially

encouraged by the district authorities to change schools. Nevertheless, in March

2007, only six parents left Osborne and only one of these was in the high priority

group.

Figure 1: Political responses towards decline in enrolments and concentration of economically disadvantaged students in Osborne

During these two conflicting and critical school years (2005-2007) in the history of

Osborne, a substantial group of middle-class parents decided to open-enrol to

Osborne. All of these changes, along with the growth in enrolment numbers by

2 The NCLB policy is federal legislation mandated in the U.S. in 2002. A school is designated as a School In Need of Improvement (SINI) if one or more measurable subgroups do not meet the NCLB targets (if they fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for two consecutive years, as measured by standardized tests). It requires choice provisions for students attending state schools that “fail”.

Chapter 1 – Introduction

5

students with middle-class parents, engendered a transformation in the school

community. In the spring of 2007, approximately 30% of the students were white,

compared to 15% in 2004, while the proportion of the students in need of an

Individual Education Plan3 (IEP) also doubled in the same period. Part of the reason

for this was the neo-liberal school choice policies that influenced the effects of the

integration policy, specifically the open-enrolment policy and the designation of

Osborne in 2007 as a School in Need of Improvement (SINI) that encouraged parents

to leave the school community.4

My participants were all affected by these conflicting policies and have in common

that they were confronted with Osborne as a choice for their children, either through

a) integration policies such as redistricting, b) the constraining forces of the market-

based choice policies due to their child having learning disabilities, or c) through

other, more deliberate or counter-intuitive choice practices. The majority of the

prospective incoming families (28 of 31) attempted integration into the Osborne-

community, but 21 families remained within Osborne throughout the research

period. All of those who left had integrated through redistricting.

1.3 Research questions

This research explores the contrast between the agents and the field as they are

understood in Bourdieu’s theory and the related literature. I utilized Bourdieu’s

framework to better understand the workings of: (a) how parental choice and school

quality are embedded in the cultural, social, spatial and moral dimensions of social

classification (Bourdieu, 1984, 2001; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Reay, Crozier, &

James, 2011; Sayer, 2005); and b) how the current advanced neo-liberal policy era in

the field of education (Bourdieu, 1999a; Hursh, 2007c; Lauder, Brown, Dillabough, &

Halsey, 2006) influences this classification. Most of these studies have focused on

normative choice behaviour, or the ‘rational chooser’, but in this research the focus is

on ‘deviant’ cases of middle-class educational choice. The main research question,

3 IEP is a written plan describing the special education program and/or services required by a particular student.

4 Through the legislation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)

Chapter 1 – Introduction

6

found in the title of this thesis, is exploring the cultural politics of the middle-classes

through the focus on how parents choose and practice to secure school equality and

quality in advanced neoliberal times.

In light of the aims and the framework of this research, this question can be divided

into following research subquestions, from macro to micro:

1. What are the structural effects of advanced neo-liberal markets and reform

policies on a school experienced as lacking the ‘right kind’ of diversity and

quality? Did the interaction of the reform policies a) change the racial and

class segregation among the three affected schools or b) the concentration of

disadvantaged families within Osborne?

2. What are the subtle class differences among the middle-class families that can

be identified through their educational choices? How did their capitals,

geographical location within the field, history, values and commitments,

gender, race, child’s learning disabilities or other identity constructive factors

influence their choice or avoidance of, integration into, and satisfaction while

at Osborne?

3. How did the remaining middle-class community members of Osborne secure

academic and socio-emotional ‘quality’ and manage their anxiety in a

stigmatized educational setting?

1.4 The research design

The general meaning of the term ‘critical theory’ is to distinguish between

‘traditional’ theories that merely reflect the current situation and theories that seek to

change it (Crotty, 2003). Bourdieu’s social theory has these elements in common with

critical theories. For the last two decades, Bourdieu’s theory of practice has been one

of the most influential critical theories in educational ‘science’ (Callewaert, 1999).

My methodological approach is guided by the conceptual framework of Bourdieu and

can be conceptualized as a critical qualitative case study. The data was collected

between the years 2005 and 2008 and concerned the choice processes of middle-

Chapter 1 – Introduction

7

class5 parents in one school district in the US. My main research method was

individual in-depth interviews (Kvale, 1996) with 64 individuals, of which 80

interviews comprise my primary data.

In order to gain a broader understanding of the intersecting neoliberal and

integration policy effect on the demography within the schools of interest, I analysed

some school enrolment statistics and governmental, historical and media documents.

As in all case studies, the first step in the analysis consists of describing the

uniqueness of the community from social, institutional, economic and political

perspectives (Creswell, 2003), and these descriptions are presented in the first

analysis chapter interwoven with interview data. More subtle description and

analysis of the diverse educational settings in Osborne can be found in Error!

Reference source not found.concerning the choices and actions of the parents in the

school.

I followed the school choice process of the participating families for three consecutive

years 2005-2008, with a micro-focus on 31 middle-class families in the spring terms

of 2007 and 2008. Altogether I collected and analysed 80 interviews, of which 53

were with parents. The supplementary data were interviews with 11 of their children

and 13 of the Osborne-school staff, plus my own observations made in the three

affected schools, and analyses of statistics and policy discussion in local journals and

newspapers. All of my interviewees were purposively selected (Weiss, 1994).

This thesis has, as any other theses, a personal context as there is no research free

from social origin and position of the researcher. My interest in this topic started

when I moved to Westfield in 2005 and my daughter started her enrolment in

Osborne. My standpoint is discussed in more details in section Error! Reference

source not found..

5 For the sampling criteria I define a middle-class family as one where at least one parent is employed in a position that either entails substantial managerial authority or that centrally draws upon highly complex, educationally certified (college-level) skills (Lareau, 2003).

Chapter 1 – Introduction

8

Table 1-1: My position as a researcher, a foreigner and a mother

The pre-phase of the study 2005-2006

The study conducted from 2007-2009

Academic year 2005-2006

Autumn 2006 Spring 2007 Autumn 2007 to the end of Lent term 2009

My route in academia

Visiting PhD student at Girton USA from the University of Iceland.

Applied to the University of Cambridge for PhD candidature.

Started my data collection process in cooperation with Professor Diane Reay.

Enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Cambridge.

Personal milestones regarding my research

My daughter started school at Osborne.

Decision made to conduct this research as my PhD topic.

In July 2007 we moved as a family from Westfield back to Iceland.

Lived in Cambridge, mainly without my family.

In the autumn of 2005 I was registered as a PhD student at the University of Iceland

when my family and I decided to move to the USA since my husband was offered a

short-term lectureship at Girton. My experience of the elementary school system in

the USA which I came to know through both coursework at Girton and parenthood in

Westfield made me change my original topic and research plan. The fact that I was a

mother in Osborne community made it possible for me to gain trust and relationship

with the key informants and for the same reason it was important to leave the

research field after conducting the data and before analysing them. However our

experience of the school was for the most part positive and inspiring culturally and

educationally.

We moved to Westfield in critical times as 2005-2006 was the first school year after

the redistricting. The discussion around the redistricting was still negative and harsh

against Osborne original community which was predominantly black and working-

class. I felt that exploring this political debate was important for me to gain deeper

understanding of advanced neoliberal education policies, especially where they have

shaped the system for decades. In Iceland such policies are more recent and their

effects are not yet as visible but instead mostly discussed as promising. In Westfield

the discourse on school quality seemed to be very much related to concentration of

privilege; whiteness and middleclassness. In other words the perceived lack of school

quality seemed to be in strong relation to inequality.

Chapter 1 – Introduction

9

1.5 Structure of the thesis

The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part outlines the thesis, contains a

review of the relevant literature and theory, and introduces the methodological

design of the research. This part includes definitions of all the main concepts. The

second part is comprised of three analysis chapters presenting the main findings of

the study. The third part is the shortest one and is a discussion of the findings in

relation to the research questions.

In the first analysis chapter, the main focus is on the geographical aspect of middle-

class choice in this conflicting policy landscape. In educational policy research,

geographical location has become an important part of understanding racial and class

differentiation and concentration of privilege within a given field (Butler & Robson,

2003; Gulson, 2011; Reay, 2007; Wacquant, 1989). The chapter reflects on the ways

in which the choice of place – both locality and school – is crucial in understanding

the quality debate in education and how quality relates to accumulated privilege in

the social context of the place.

The first analysis chapter also reflects on the responses of the parents and Osborne

authorities towards the integration policy, and how the attempt to redistribute

important capitals for schooling was turned down, both through local and federal

policies. Policies focusing on the social context promoting racial (Borman et al., 2004;

Frankenberg & Orfield, 2007) and class integration (Kahlenberg, 2001) for ‘low-

achieving’ schools run counter to the dominant effectiveness discourse calling for

organizational reform embedded within choice and accountability frameworks. The

main conclusion of this chapter is that the interaction of these policies during 2005-

2008 played a role in the possible reproduction of racial and class segregation among

the three affected schools.

The second analysis chapter explores the parents’ search for a sense of community

through schooling, both for themselves and their children, while at the same time

creating and/or maintaining symbolic boundaries between their family and the

community. Their narratives elucidate their struggle to identify as both a rational

chooser and a chooser based on commitments to your ‘own group’ and to the

common good. The parents who chose to keep their children at Osborne had a sense

of belonging there, in contrast with their feelings about the two elite schools. Their

Chapter 1 – Introduction

10

choice of this school community can be traced to identity-related factors such as the

racial identity of the family or the learning disability of their child, as well as their

own personal educational philosophy, locality, history, values and commitments

(Reay et al., 2011). All of the participants talked about the importance of diversity

when choosing schools but the meaning of the word fluctuated and finding the ‘wrong

kind’ of diversity (Byrne, 2006; Randolph, 2013) played an important part in some

parents not finding the right sense of community in Osborne.

In the final analysis chapter I delve deeper into the parents’ and children’s narratives

of their strategies to obtain more security in an unfamiliar class context (Crozier et al.,

2008; Reay, 2005b; Reay et al., 2011; Reay et al., 2007). There were several important

factors required by the integrating families in order for them to stay and be satisfied

in the school despite the negative discourses on the quality of the school and official

encouragement from federal authorities to leave the school, and analysis of the

narratives reveals how they reconciled their privilege in the school context. The

within-school choices concerned curriculum, teachers, peer group/classroom

composition and relationships with school authorities. There are narratives that

reflect on the importance of values, capitals and location within the field when a

person is in a situation that may disrupt the synchronicity of habitus and field. This

chapter gives a more detailed analysis of the strategies parents used to secure their

position within the school, that is how they activated their capitals (Lareau & Horvat,

1999; Lareau & Weininger, 2003) and ‘invested’ in the school in order to become a

‘satisfied customer’. It became apparent that staying parents directed their

accommodation strategies towards particular understandings of mothering practices

(Duncan, 2005; Griffith & Smith, 2005; Vincent, 2010) and parental involvement, in

order to secure academic and socio-emotional ‘quality’ in the Osborne educational

setting, and also manage their anxiety of having their child enrolled in the stigmatized

school

Chapter 1 – Introduction

11