This article was downloaded by: [Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj]On: 08 September 2014, At: 11:11Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of School Choice: InternationalResearch and ReformPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjsc20

Two Roads Diverged: Exploring Variationin Students’ School Choice Experiencesby Socioeconomic Status, ParentalNativity, and EthnicityCarolyn Sattin-Bajaja

a Department of Education Leadership, Management & Policy andCenter for College Readiness, College of Education and HumanServices, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, USAPublished online: 05 Sep 2014.

To cite this article: Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj (2014) Two Roads Diverged: Exploring Variation in Students’School Choice Experiences by Socioeconomic Status, Parental Nativity, and Ethnicity, Journal of SchoolChoice: International Research and Reform, 8:3, 410-445, DOI: 10.1080/15582159.2014.942174

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15582159.2014.942174

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Journal of School Choice, 8:410–445, 2014Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1558-2159 print/1558-2167 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15582159.2014.942174

Two Roads Diverged: Exploring Variationin Students’ School Choice Experiences

by Socioeconomic Status,Parental Nativity, and Ethnicity

CAROLYN SATTIN-BAJAJDepartment of Education Leadership, Management & Policy and Center for College Readiness,

College of Education and Human Services, Seton Hall University, South Orange,New Jersey, USA

This article examines the high school search activities, choices,and final assignments of academically similar, but ethnically andsocioeconomically different, eighth-grade students attending oneNew York City middle school. Despite being comparable candi-dates for admission to academically competitive high schools, themiddle-class children of Asian immigrants were significantly morelikely than the children of lower-income Latin American immi-grants to be assigned to the highest performing schools. Interviewswith 15 students revealed systematic differences in their knowl-edge, resources, and engagement in high school choice that helpexplain the disparity in the academic quality of their high schoolassignments.

KEYWORDS school choice, immigrant students, educationalequity

Concern about rising income inequality in the United States has reached newheights. With the income gap between the richest and poorest Americanslarger today than at any other time in the last century (Levine, 2012;Saez, 2013) politicians, policy-makers, and citizens alike are increasinglyfocused on identifying solutions both to narrow the gap and respond to

Address correspondence to Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, Seton Hall University, Department ofEducation Leadership, Management & Policy and Center for College Readiness, College ofEducation and Human Services, Jubilee Hall 413, 400 South Orange Avenue, South Orange,NJ 07079, USA. E-mail: carolyn.sattinbajaj@shu.edu

410

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 411

the consequences of this income disparity. The implications for education ofincreasing economic stratification are far reaching. Researchers have foundevidence of widening test score gaps between high- and low-income stu-dents (Reardon, 2011), large variation in the quality of schools they attend(Duncan & Magnuson, 2011; Kirk & Sampson, 2011), and significant dif-ferences in educational attainment and college graduation rates by familyincome (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011).

Some researchers have linked contemporary educational stratificationto a return to the kind of separate systems of education that character-ized schooling in the United States during the pre-Civil Rights era (Orfield,Kucsera, & Siegel-Hawley, 2012; Rothstein, 2004). Residential segregationby income has increased in recent decades (Fry & Taylor, 2012), and withit has come a reduction in the socioeconomic diversity of many schoolsand a decline in the quality, performance, and resources of many publicschools in lower-income areas (Duncan & Magnuson, 2011; Kirk & Sampson,2011). Thus, the question of how to increase low-income students’ access tohigh quality educational opportunities is at the forefront of many policydiscussions in education today.

School choice features prominently among the policies being imple-mented in districts across the country to address this “opportunity gap.”School choice comprises everything from charter schools (publicly fundedschools that operate outside of the district administrative structures) andmagnet schools (public schools with distinctive, thematic curricula designedto attract parents of diverse socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds),to interdistrict and intradistrict transfer programs and vouchers plans (pub-lic funds given to parents to cover private school tuitions). Although formsof school choice have been in place since the school desegregation move-ment of the 1960s, districts across the United States have adopted schoolchoice with renewed vigor in recent years as part of a broader set of market-based educational reform strategies proposed to improve school qualitywhile simultaneously increasing educational equity.

The continued expansion of choice programs across the country, fueledin part by policy-makers’ ongoing support of these policies as a mechanismto counteract educational inequalities, substantiates the need for exploratoryqualitative and quantitative studies of students’ approaches to, and perspec-tives on, school search and selection processes. Such research could helpidentify some of the barriers to and opportunities for using school choicepolicies as a lever for increasing educational equity. To that end, in this arti-cle I attempt to identify some of the obstacles to using school choice policiesto combat educational opportunity gaps by asking:

How do high achieving, low-income children of Latin American immi-grants in one middle school engage in the mandatory high school choiceprocess in New York City and how do their approaches to choice, their

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

412 C. Sattin-Bajaj

access to support and resources and their final high school assignmentscompare to those of higher income Asian-origin peers attending the sameschool?

This article draws from a larger study of diverse eighth-grade students’ andfamilies’ experiences with high school choice in New York City, which ispresented in its entirety in the book, Unaccompanied Minors: ImmigrantYouth, School Choice and the Pursuit of Equity (Sattin-Bajaj, 2014).

SCHOOL CHOICE EXPANSION AND EQUITY DEBATES

The most recent figures show that 42 states and the District of Columbiahave charter school laws, and all but four states have some form of inter-district or intradistrict open enrollment policy (Center for Education Reform,2011; Education Commission of the States, 2011). The federal governmenthas also publicly endorsed school choice, most prominently through thefederal Race to the Top grant competition that penalizes states without char-ter school laws in place and those that have caps on the number of charterschools allowed. Yet, evidence on the effectiveness of school choice poli-cies to combat educational inequities, or the capacity of choice to increasedisadvantaged students’ access to higher quality educational opportunities isdecidedly mixed.

A major criticism of voluntary choice programs has been their failureto attract and serve the most disadvantaged and academically needy stu-dents (Buckley & Sattin-Bajaj, 2011; Buckley, Schneider, & Shang, 2005;Fiske & Ladd, 2000; Goldring & Hausman, 1999; Orfield & Frankenberg,2013; Wells, Holme, Lopez, & Cooper, 2000). For example, Buckley and col-leagues (2005) and Buckley and Sattin-Bajaj (2011) found that “harder toserve” student populations (English language learners and students requir-ing special education services) were underrepresented in charter schools inWashington, DC and New York City. However, there is substantial varia-tion across “type” of choice policy, and recent studies of voucher programsin Milwaukee and Washington, DC have shown that voucher participantsare some of the lowest-income and lowest-performing students in the dis-trict (Fleming, Cowen, Witte, & Wolf, 2013; Wolf, Gutmann, Eissa, Puma,& Silverberg, 2005). Studies of the impact of choice on school segregationhave also shown that choice policies tend to result in greater racial/ethnichomogeneity within schools, reduced socioeconomic integration, and lessmixing among students of different achievement levels (Bifulco & Ladd,2007) although not universally (Booker, Zimmer, & Buddin, 2005; Zimmer,Gill, Booker, Lavertu, & Witte, 2011).

The question of the competitive effects of school choice on achieve-ment and operational and fiscal efficiency in traditional public schools has

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 413

been extensively studied and debated as well. Although most studies haveconcluded that increased choice is associated with modest improvements ineducational outcomes in traditional public schools (Belfield & Levin, 2002;Egalite, 2013), some scholars continue to challenge claims of school choice’spositive competitive effects (Bifulco & Ladd, 2007). The issue of whether andhow school choice improves operational and fiscal efficiency of traditionalpublic schools or has an impact on the resources available to students in tra-ditional public schools also remains unsettled (Arsen & Ni, 2011; Betts, 2009;Dee & Fu, 2004; Hoxby, 2003; Miron & Urschel, 2010; Ni, 2009; Wells, 2002).Finally, comparisons of student achievement in schools of choice and tra-ditional public schools have yielded similarly inconclusive results (Buckleyet al., 2005; Center for Research on Education Outcomes [CREDO], 2009;Cullen, Jacob, & Levitt, 2005; Hoxby & Murarka, 2009; Wolf et al., 2011).In sum, many claims by school choice proponents about its promise toincrease educational equity have yet to receive broad consensus amongpolicy analysts and researchers.

Research on the search behaviors and experiences of choice “con-sumers,” namely, parents, has highlighted additional inequities associatedwith district- and school-level choice policies and practices. Studies haveshown that higher income, more educated families tend to have easieraccess to information and materials (Andre-Becheley, 2005; Buckley &Schneider, 2007; Sattin-Bajaj, 2014; Schneider, Teske, & Marschall, 2000;Smrekar & Goldring, 1999), benefit from more diverse social networks totap for guidance and information (Sattin-Bajaj, 2014; Smrekar & Goldring,1999; Teske, Fitzpatrick, & Kaplan, 2007), and possess greater financialresources and time to invest in searching, visiting, and making decisions(Andre-Becheley, 2005; Ball, 1993; Brantlinger, 2003; Sattin-Bajaj, 2014;Schneider et al., 2000; Teske et al., 2007). As a result, higher incomeparents tend to be at a significant advantage when competing againstlower income families for access to high-performing schools in a schoolchoice environment (Andre-Becheley, 2005; Ball, 1993; Brantlinger, 2003;Sattin-Bajaj, 2014; Smrekar & Goldring, 1999; Stewart & Wolf, 2014).

The existing data on individuals’ and groups’ school choice behaviorsare limited in two fundamental ways. First, most studies of choice behaviorshave taken place in voluntary rather than controlled (or compulsory) choicecontexts. As a result, knowledge about choice perspectives, behaviors, andpreferences is restricted to those people who have pursued schools of choiceof their own volition. Next, nearly all of the research on choice behaviors atthe elementary and secondary school levels is based on data collected fromparents; the voices and experiences of students are missing.

Students are at the center of this analysis of school choice and edu-cational access. This article examines the high school search activities,choices, and final assignments of two academically similar, but ethnicallyand socioeconomically different groups of eighth-grade students attending

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

414 C. Sattin-Bajaj

the same New York City middle school: high-performing, low-income chil-dren of immigrants from across Latin America and the Spanish-speakingCaribbean in the “honors track” who lived in the middle school catch-ment area, and high-performing, higher income children of East and SouthAsian immigrants from middle-class neighborhoods who attended a magnetgifted and talented program within the same school. Data from in-depthinterviews with students are analyzed to explain how systematic differ-ences in their knowledge, resources, and overall engagement in high schoolchoice relate to the disparity in the academic quality of their ultimate highschool assignments. The article focuses on how four separate elements—peers, school-based information sources, reasons for choosing schools, andthe role of family—contributed to variation in students’ experiences withand the results of the mandatory high school choice process in New YorkCity.

HIGH SCHOOL CHOICE IN NEW YORK CITY

In New York City families may participate in school choice at every stage oftheir child’s public education from prekindergarten onward through the exis-tence of open enrollment policies and charter schools. The district’s marqueechoice initiative is the mandatory high school choice policy that requires alleighth-grade students who wish to attend a public, noncharter high schoolin New York City to submit an application. It is touted by school officialsas a policy that can provide families with abundant choice options whilesimultaneously increasing equity across the district.

Each year an estimated 80,000 eighth-grade students participate in thehigh school choice process in New York City. In the fall of their eighth-grade year all students receive an application form and are asked to choose12 options from among 700 programs in approximately 400 public highschools citywide. These programs vary by theme/academic focus, eligibilityrequirements, selection method, student support services, extracurricularactivities, and performance, among other characteristics. Despite the vastnumber of educational offerings in New York City there continues to be anundersupply of high performing high schools even after decades of reform.According to an analysis from the Center for New York City Affairs at TheNew School (Hemphill & Nauer, 2009), only 38.3% of schools with graduat-ing classes in 2007 had graduation rates of 75% or higher. More recent datareleased by the New York City Department of Education and analyzed bythis author show that by 2011, the percentage of high schools with grad-uation rates of 75 or above had declined slightly to 34%; this figure dropsto 20.2% of high schools when the new Regents diploma requirements areused.1 Thus, high school assignments stand to have significant impact onstudents’ educational outcomes.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 415

To date, the New York City Department of Education’s (NYCDOE)avowed pursuit of equity through high school choice has proven to havelimited success. Analyses of eighth-grade students’ choices and high schoolassignments have found minimal evidence that high school choice is improv-ing low-income and minority students’ access to higher performing schoolsthan the zoned high schools (neighborhood high schools to which theywould have automatically been assigned without choice), increasing schoolintegration, or promoting equity in any other way (Corcoran & Levin, 2011;Meade, Gaytan, Fergus, & Noguera, 2009; Medina, 2010). Low-performingstudents, who tend to be highly concentrated in poor neighborhoods, arefacing particular challenges in securing high-quality high school placements(Nathanson, Corcoran, & Baker-Smith, 2013).

The official choice process begins in fall of eighth grade when each stu-dent receives an individualized application form printed with his/her finalseventh-grade report card, his/her seventh-grade standardized test scores inreading and math, and average yearly attendance. These data determine astudent’s eligibility for certain “screened” schools and programs that havespecific attendance, grades, and test score requirements. Completed appli-cations are due in early December, and students receive their high schoolassignments (“matches”) in early spring. Roughly 10% of students do notreceive a “match” in the first round (NYCDOE, 2013) and are deferred to thesupplementary round.

METHODS

The results presented in this article come from two data sources: adminis-trative student-level records of the first and supplementary round matchingresults of the high school choice process for all of the eighth-grade studentsenrolled in a case study middle school (N = 750) during the primary year ofthe study and interviews with 15 purposively sampled middle school studentswho were recruited based on family background, achievement level, andother characteristics hypothesized to be important predictors of variation inchoice behaviors.

Case Study Middle School Site

During the 2-year period (2008–2010) in which the study occurred, “IS725”(pseudonym) served approximately 2,100 students in Grades 6 through 8.Upon enrollment in sixth grade, every student was assigned to one of five“academies,” each with its own assistant principal, guidance counselor, anddisciplinary dean. Students were also placed in an academic track: honors,regular, English as a Second Language (ESL), bilingual, special education,and gifted and talented, and they travelled to all major classes with the same

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

416 C. Sattin-Bajaj

group of students from their homeroom. Students in the gifted and talentedtrack came from across the borough of Queens and were admitted based onthe results of a standardized exam; honors-track students were from withinthe catchment area and zoned for IS 725 who had received recommendationsfrom elementary school teachers or assigned based on elementary schoolperformance.

The student body was composed primarily of first-generation (foreign-born) and second-generation (U.S.-born) children of Latin American immi-grants from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia. Eightypercent of students were Hispanic followed by 12% Asian (first- and second-generation students of Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani origin),6% Black and 2% White. Over 80% of students qualified for free- or reduced-price lunch, and the school’s high proportion of English language learners(37.9%) far outpaced the city-wide average of 14.1% in the final year of thestudy (2009–2010).

Interviews

In-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with eight high-performing, low-income children of immigrant parents with limited formaleducation who lived within the school’s catchment area. These families origi-nally came from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, El Salvador and Colombia.A comparison interview group was composed of seven high performing chil-dren of immigrant parents from China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and oneAfrican-American student in a magnet gifted and talented program at thesame middle school. The students in this comparison sample lived outside ofthe middle school’s catchment area in higher-income, middle-class neighbor-hoods across the borough of Queens, and their parents were professionalswho had completed at least an undergraduate degree in their countries oforigin. These 15 students formed part of a larger group of 46 eighth-gradestudents enrolled in the case study middle school who were recruited forinterviews based on the following characteristics: immigrant generation (first,second, or third and beyond), academic achievement (high, average, andlow-performing), academic track, birth order (first and not first in family toattend high school in New York City), and country of origin/parents’ countryof origin. I hypothesized that these characteristics would be important pre-dictors of variation in students’ understanding of and approaches to choosinghigh schools in New York City.

The subsample of students discussed in this article comprise all ofthe interview participants in the high performing quadrant. Their seventh-grade final report card grades and standardized-test scores qualified themfor acceptance to most screened schools and programs in New York City.2

Keeping achievement, and consequently, eligibility for admission to themost selective and highest performing high schools constant allowed for

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 417

exploration of other factors that contribute to differences in students’ abil-ity to access, and likelihood of accessing, high quality education through achoice program like New York City’s. The low-income Latino student sam-ple was composed of five girls, and three boys whose families came fromdiverse parts of Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Threestudents (all female) had roots in the Dominican Republic, two (both male)were of Mexican origin, and one student each was either born in, or hadparents, from El Salvador, Colombia, and Puerto Rico. Half of the studentswere foreign born (first-generation immigrants), three were U.S.-born chil-dren of immigrant parents (second-generation immigrants), and one was thegranddaughter of Puerto Rican immigrants (third generation). More than half(five) of the students were not the first in their family to have participated inhigh school choice in New York City.

The comparison group of higher-income students from the gifted andtalented track was composed of six girls and only one male intervie-wee. The countries of origin represented included India (two students),Bangladesh (two), Pakistan (one), and China (one), and one student wasAfrican American. In contrast to the Latino sample, the majority (five) of thestudents in this group were the first in their family to participate in highschool choice in New York City. See Table 1, to follow, for a side-by-sidecomparison of student interview participants.

TABLE 1 Student Interview Sample

Pseudonym GenderImmigrantGeneration Country of Origin

First in Family to Participatein NYC High School Choice

High Performing, Lower Income Honors StudentsMaribel F 1st Dominican Republic YesCarmen F 1st Dominican Republic NoMaristela F 1st El Salvador YesEmilio M 2nd Mexico YesJordan M 2nd Mexico NoJasmin F 2nd Dominican Republic NoMauricio M 1st Colombia NoMelissa F 3rd Puerto Rico No

High Performing, Higher Income Gifted & Talented StudentsSeema F 2nd Pakistan NoAsma F 2nd Bangladesh NoKrista F 3rd plus USA YesMin F 1st China YesSalman M 2nd Bangladesh YesLaxmi F 2nd India YesMonisha F 2nd India Yes

Note. Key: F= female, M = male; 1st represents first generation immigrant or foreign born; 2nd representssecond generation immigrant or U.S. born to at least one foreign-born parent; 3rd represents U.S. bornto U.S.-born parents.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

418 C. Sattin-Bajaj

Students were interviewed in their preferred language (English orSpanish), and the interviews, which lasted from 30 to 45 min, took placeduring students’ lunch period or after school in a private room. The firstinterviews were conducted in early December after students had turnedin their completed high school applications and continued until late Mayafter students had received their first-round high school matches. During theinterviews, students were asked a series of questions about their understand-ing of how the high school choice process works and how they learnedabout it. They were also asked to identify the high schools they listed ontheir application and to explain their rationale for the schools they selected.Finally, I inquired about parents’ and family members’ involvement in thechoice process and their role relative to their parents’ in decision makingand asked them to identify the people who most strongly influenced theirschool selections. Students who were interviewed after they had receivedtheir high school assignments were asked about their satisfaction with theirhigh school match and asked to describe their feelings about going to highschool generally.

Student interviews were coded and analyzed in a series of steps usingAtlas.ti qualitative analysis software. A first reading surfaced repeated, promi-nent, or puzzling topics and identified broad categories of meaning bothwithin and across student subgroups (LeCompte & Schensul, 1999). The roleof peers, family members, and school personnel in students’ choices as wellas the school characteristics and the reasons students articulated for applyingto their high schools of choice emerged as important themes and sources ofvariation across groups. Stage two of analysis consisted of highlighting thetext, visualizing the interaction among topics, categories, and themes, anddetermining which themes merited further exploration. In the final phase,the most compelling ideas and patterns were analyzed with an eye towardclearly defining within- and cross-group meanings, and the larger theoreticalimplications of the themes from the interview data were brought to light(Corbin & Strauss, 2007).

HIGH SCHOOL MATCHING RESULTS

Table 2 provides the first and supplementary round matching results of thehigh school choice process for all of the eighth-grade students in the hon-ors (N = 58) and gifted and talented (N = 25) tracks at IS 725 during the2009–2010 school year. For analytic purposes, high schools were dividedinto three separate categories “high performing” (80% or higher 4-year highschool graduation rate), “low performing” (65% or lower 4-year high schoolgraduation rate), and “middle performing” (high schools with 4-year gradu-ation rates between 65 and 80%). The proportion of students assigned toeach “type” of high school by academic track is presented in the table.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 419

TABLE 2 High School Matching Results by Academic Track

% HighPerforming

% MiddlePerforming

% LowPerforming

% SupplementaryRound

Honors (n = 58) 20.7 48.3 31.0 10.3Gifted & Talented

(n = 25)84.6 7.7 7.7 7.7

School-wide average(n = 750)

15.2 33.9 45.7 14.3

Note. Rows show the percentage of students in the honors track, gifted and talented track, and school-wide who were matched to a high, middle, and low performing high school or deferred to thesupplementary round. High performing high schools were those with 80% or higher 4-year gradua-tion rates; middle performing high schools were those with 4-year graduation rates between 65% and80% and low performing high schools were those with 4-year graduation rates below 65%. The supple-mentary round column shows the percentage of students by track that did not receive a high schoolmatch in the first round and thus had to participate in the supplementary round in which fewer schoolswere available.

An additional column indicates the percentage of students by track that didnot receive a high school match in the first round and thus had to partic-ipate in the supplementary round in which fewer schools were available.Important differences can be observed in the quality of students’ high schoolassignments by track.

Based on their seventh-grade final course grades, students in the giftedand talented track and those in the honors track at IS 725 were comparable—although not equal—candidates for admission to high schools and programsin the “high performing” category. Yet, whereas 84.6% of students in thegifted and talented track were assigned to high schools with at least an80% 4-year graduation rate, only 20.7% of students in the honors trackreceived similar assignments. Instead, 48.3% of honors-track students wereassigned to high schools with 4-year graduation rates of between 65% and80% and another 31% of them were placed in schools with graduation ratesbelow 65%. The larger than expected gap in admission to high performinghigh schools between the high performing but predominantly low-incomechildren of Latin American immigrants in the honors track and the highperforming children of higher income, more educated predominantly Asianimmigrants in the gifted and talented track raises questions about differencesin the supports and resources at students’ disposal and how this may have animpact on their engagement in school choice and school selection. Analysisof the choice experiences of these two groups of students sheds light on thetypes of interventions that might better equip all students with the infor-mation and guidance they may need to access high quality educationalopportunities. In what follows, qualitative evidence of differences in theirapproaches, resources, and supports is presented to explore and explain thedisparities in the high performing students’ high school assignments.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

420 C. Sattin-Bajaj

FOUR DIMENSIONS OF DIFFERENCE

The interviews highlighted four main areas in which students’ experiencesvaried: (a) the role of peers, (b) the amount and type of school-basedinformation they obtained, (c) the degree and type of family memberinvolvement, and (d) the school characteristics they considered when choos-ing high schools. The gifted- and talented-track students demonstratedconsiderably greater investment in, and knowledge of, the intricacies of theapplication process when compared to their high-performing Latino peers.In fact, three features uniquely defined the gifted and talented students’engagement in the high school choice process. First, they searched fordetailed information about specific schools’ academic outcomes and offer-ings. Next, they sought personalized guidance from school personnel andreceived direction from family members about which schools to consider andultimately select. Finally, they emphasized schools’ academic performanceand reputation as primary reasons for selection. This strategic approach tochoice resulted from a combination of their own efforts actively to pursueadditional information and guidance from a range of school, city-wide, andhome-based sources and their greater financial resources and family involve-ment to start with. Conversely, the majority of the high-achieving low-incomeLatino honors students interviewed tended to rely on generic, operationalinformation from far fewer sources.

An extreme degree of integration among peer-, home- and school-based supports characterized the gifted and talented students’ experienceswith the high school choice process. This integration of supports facilitatedtheir development of a precise, almost automated, approach to maneuveringthrough the high school choice maze or, what I call an institutional com-pass. By institutional compass, I am referring to a coherent plan, approach,or navigation system—akin to a car’s global positioning system (GPS)—thatstudents possessed and were able to put to use as a tool to facilitate theirdecision making. The institutional compass that proved helpful in negotiat-ing the high school application process in New York City consisted of threecore components: an understanding of the details of the choice policy andthe school system as a whole, knowledge of the key school-level perfor-mance metrics and indicators of academic quality available to consumers,and access to family supports that matched the NYCDOE’s expectations ofthe role parents would play in making school selections.

Students in the gifted and talented track also had defined sets ofcriteria for choosing schools that were continually informed and influencedby various people in their social worlds. In other words, they developedwhat I am calling a multiply reinforced orientation to certain (typicallyhigh-performing) high schools. Together, the institutional compass andthe multiply reinforced orientation helped them strategically negotiate theprocess. Strategic choosers thus employed their institutional compass in

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 421

pursuit of a focused, generally uniform goal of obtaining admission to oneof a select number of high performing high schools that were deemedacceptable by individuals within their overlapping ecological spheres(Brofenbrenner, 1979).

By contrast, the Latino honors students described disjointed develop-mental contexts, lacked clear criteria for school selections, and chose highschools in relative isolation; or, said differently, they engaged in passivechoice. Evidence from student interviews belies simplistic conclusions thatattribute patterns of strategic versus passive choosing solely to family back-ground characteristics such as parental income and education or even tocultural norms and practices. I suggest that the alignment versus separa-tion of students’ social spheres with regard to the task of choosing highschools is a key difference and a major source of advantage for gifted andtalented students or a major disadvantage for the high-performing Latinostudents. The patterns and themes that emerged in student interviews illumi-nated the combined power of receiving consistent, reinforced messages frompeers, family members, and school personnel in terms of making informedschool choices. At the same time, the interviews revealed the consequencesof district-level policies that fail to put in place a robust infrastructureto assist students who do not have access to similarly integrated supportsystems.

Peer Influences

The important role that peers can play in influencing adolescents’ educa-tional and life-course trajectories has been well established in the researchliterature. There is robust evidence demonstrating the strong associationbetween peers and students’ school adjustment (Crosnoe, Cavanagh, & Elder,2003), motivation (Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998; Valenzuela, 1999) andacademic achievement (Crosnoe & Needham, 2004) although peers havebeen shown to exert both positive and negative influences (Fuligni, Eccles,Barber, & Clements, 2001; Portes & Landolt, 1996; Ream, 2003). In light ofthe considerable evidence regarding peer influences, it was not surprisingthat the role of peers emerged as a dominant theme in students’ narrativesof their high school choice experiences.

Peers played a prominent and versatile role in the school search anddecision-making processes of students in the gifted and talented track. Theirprimary function was as a source of information about specific high schools,dates for open houses and choice events, and procedures related to the highschool application itself. Students in this track who were the first in their fam-ily to attend high school in New York City were particularly dependent upontheir peers and classmates whose older siblings had been through the appli-cation process previously. They would ask their classmates to inquire aboutspecific schools and get the older siblings’ recommendations and warnings.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

422 C. Sattin-Bajaj

A powerful set of shared norms about how to go about choosinghigh schools operated within the gifted and talented classroom. Thesenorms appeared to have a strong influence on students’ search behav-iors, the schools they would and would not consider, and the order inwhich they listed high schools on their application forms. In fact, thesestudents frequently recounted engaging in identical search activities—oftentogether—consulting the same set of information sources and having thesame high school preferences.

The gifted and talented students’ sense of shared expectations andcommon orientation was exemplified in three ways: their uniform researchstrategies, a similar prioritization of high schools on the final application, andtheir treatment of the entire process as a collaborative venture. First, whenrecounting the activities they engaged in prior to completing the applica-tion form, many of the gifted and talented interview participants spoke as ifthey were merely following the steps of some invisible, yet widely knownrulebook that all of their friends and classmates possessed. This was the com-mon institutional compass being put to use. Their search strategy includedattending at least one high school fair and multiple high school open houses,searching online for information about graduation rates, college acceptances,Regents Examination passing rates, and SAT scores, and asking relatives,friends, teachers, and other adults what they knew about different schools.Perhaps most importantly, this also included preparing for and taking theSpecialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), a standardized entranceexamination administered annually.

Next, their explanations of the high schools to which they ultimatelydecided to apply and in which order highlighted the consistency of theirgoals and the existence of a strong normative undercurrent. Because nearlyevery student in the gifted and talented track took the SHSAT, those schoolswere most frequently named at the top of their lists. The eight “specialized”high schools used scores on the SHSAT as the sole admissions criterion.When I asked Asma3 about the order in which she put the high schoolson her application, she responded: “Oh, regular, like everyone put. Becauseobviously it’s Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech. Those arethe three major ones.” Seema further explained the hierarchy of high schoolsthat was well understood among her classmates:

Because at first you don’t really pay attention to schools like BrooklynTech or Bronx Science . . . you are aiming at Stuyvesant and every-thing . . . Because they say that Stuyvesant is like the best high schoolthere is . . . So everybody is going to aim for Stuyvesant then.

Since students who took the specialized test also had the opportunityto apply to 12 additional high schools, a similarly homogeneous pattern was

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 423

seen in how the gifted-and-talented-track students ordered their “nonspecial-ized” high schools. Seema explained how she and her friends ordered theirpreferences:

Yeah, because they [classmates] saw that when the [eligibility] require-ments has to be like 95 to 100 or 98 to 100 and all of us like fell intothat . . . For public [nonspecialized] high schools it’s mostly, because mostkids in our class always put High School X first because it was appar-ent, but I think the story was that High School X was supposed to be aspecialized school . . . So we had High School X, High School Y, HighSchool Z, um High School C . . .

Students in the gifted and talented class were all keenly aware of whichschools were desirable or even acceptable in the eyes of their classmates.Therefore, when one student deviated from the class norm by ranking BronxScience first, she described feeling like “an outsider.” Her comments reflect apotentially negative side effect of choosing high schools within such a tightlyknit, normative environment: students may feel sanctioned or limited in theirfreedom to choose based on their individualized interests.

The fact that a number of students in the gifted and talented track dis-cussed the high school choice process as a collective undertaking constituteda final distinguishing feature of their experiences and approach. Like stu-dents from across the middle school, gifted and talented students attemptedto coordinate their lists with friends in an effort to avoid being “alone.”However, the coordination did not end there. These students attended openhouses and high school fairs together, they spoke to one another’s oldersiblings about their high school experiences, and perhaps most importantly,they understood it as a joint endeavor whereby every additional piece ofinformation obtained was communal property. As Seema recounted: “She[the guidance counselor] said if you have any questions you can come to myoffice. And every week or two a kid would go then he’d tell us like, ‘Shesaid this, this, be aware of this.’”

The high performing Latino students in the honors track relied simi-larly on their peers as sources of information. However, because their peersoften had limited information or generic knowledge about schools and theyconducted less rigorous investigations on their own, peers ultimately serveda less valuable function in the lives of these students. Moreover, the clearconsensus among gifted and talented students about what were consideredappropriate high school selections, or their multiply reinforced orientationtoward high schools with specific academic qualities, was absent amonghigh performing students in the honors-track classes.

When the honors-track Latino students discussed their peers’ involve-ment in their high school choices, they described having brief conversationsabout the schools to which they were applying and why. They were

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

424 C. Sattin-Bajaj

interested in finding “good” high schools, and they exchanged tips aboutattractive options whenever possible. When asked whether she talked abouthigh schools with any of her friends, Maristela, the eldest daughter ofSalvadoran immigrants, recounted: “We talked about like, what schools wewould go to . . . if they are . . . if they recommend [the schools] to us also. . . what schools we chose, how’s the criteria [eligibility requirements], whatyou want to learn.” Other students mentioned analogous discussions withfriends and classmates that focused on identifying schools where there are“no bad kids” and “you have to have good grades to make it to the school.”

Honors-track students also found their friends and classmates to beimportant sources of support in making decisions about high schools. Formany of them, this support was missing at home. Emilio, the eldest of fivechildren born to poor, Mexican immigrant parents who themselves had notattended high school explained: “Another friend of mine, he’s an eighthgrader and told me to choose, um, I should choose uh, a high school thatwould benefit me later on in life and stuff.” Perhaps because so few of thesestudents reported attending any high school fairs or open houses, none ofthem mentioned engaging in any concrete school search activities jointlywith their peers.

Finally, although there was no evidence of shared standards for howto choose high schools among high performing students, a number ofthem ended up applying to the same schools. In fact, six students in oneof the honors classes were matched to the same Manhattan high school.This result was notable because one of the high performing students spokeexcitedly about his and five other of his friends having been assigned thisschool. However, the school had lower than a 65% 4-year graduation ratein 2008–2009. Thus, for some Latino students in the honors track, peerinfluences did not always lead to academically beneficial results: friendsand classmates might encourage one another to apply to high schools theyerroneously perceived as high performing based on limited knowledge ofthe schools.

School Personnel Involvement

Relatively little research exists on the ways in which school choice partici-pants use school-based information sources. Although studies have shownthat lower income, less educated and minority parents tend to rely more onschool-based sources of information than higher income, higher educatedand White parents (Andre-Becheley, 2005; Schneider et al., 2000; Teske et al.,2007; Teske, Schneider, Roch, & Marschall, 2000), data on parents’ actualinteractions with school personnel and their consumption of the choice mate-rials that schools produce are limited (see Buckley & Schneider, 2007 for oneexample). Even less is known about students’ use of information furnishedby schools.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 425

Middle schools in New York City maintain significant autonomy in deter-mining how to work with families on high school choice. They have full reinto decide the content of the information that will be disseminated to studentsand parents, how this information will be shared, when, and by whom, andtheir activities are neither monitored nor measured in any evaluation by theNYCDOE. Schools like IS 725 that serve the most disadvantaged popula-tions are being called on to furnish more intensive support—academic andother—to help all students reach academic proficiency and become “collegeand career ready.” To do so, they require both resources and incentives.These same schools are often under the most intense scrutiny and pressurefrom the local and state education authorities to improve student outcomeson standardized tests. As a result, they logically organize themselves and dis-tribute resources to meet the benchmarks for which they will be rewardedand pay less attention to policies for which they will not be judged.

Under these conditions, the school counselors at IS 725 treated highschool choice as a necessary chore, and they attempted to minimize itsdemands on their time. Hundreds of hours of ethnographic observations con-ducted at IS 725 to learn about school-level outreach and information provi-sion to students and families about high school choice revealed that the fewchoice-related activities taking place lacked direct counseling or coachingabout how to select appropriate choices. Instead, school counselors focusedtheir efforts on collecting a completed application from every eighth-gradestudent by the deadline and limiting the number of future appeals requests.

Nearly all of the gifted and talented students named school personnelas contributing to their choice decisions yet fewer than half of the honors-track Latino students made reference to receiving assistance from teachers,guidance counselors, or school staff. Gifted and talented students relied onguidance counselors and teachers to augment their independent efforts toidentify and research schools, gather information, and make decisions aboutwhich schools met their academic criteria and best matched their skillsand interests. As such, school-based information served to strengthen andreinforce the messages and resources they received from peers and familymembers. Although some gifted and talented students mentioned occasionsin which teachers would ask them which schools they were considering,almost universally the role of school personnel came up in the context ofstudents describing instances in which they sought out additional advice orclarification.

Monisha, the U.S.-born daughter of Indian immigrant parents, describedspeaking privately with her guidance counselor about high schools duringthe parent–teacher conference. Laxmi, another Indian-origin student in thegifted and talented track, set up a special time for her and her mother to meetwith the guidance counselor to discuss high school options. Other studentsvisited the guidance counselor or teachers during their lunch period to talkabout high schools, and those students who participated in an after-school

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

426 C. Sattin-Bajaj

program put on by the school to help prepare for the specialized high schooladmissions tests (five of the interviewees in total) all mentioned getting usefultips about which high schools to consider from the teacher who led theprogram.

The information that gifted-and-talented-track students gleaned orrequested from school personnel relating to the high school applicationfell into one of four categories. In most cases, students sought feedbackfrom their guidance counselor or teacher about the schools in which theywere already interested. Generally, they wanted to know if the schoolwas academically rigorous enough for them, if it was safe, and it if hada good “reputation.” Students also frequently inquired about names ofother schools they might have overlooked that would also match theiracademic and thematic/career requirements. Guidance counselors wereconsulted about choice policy guidelines including their recommendationfor the minimum number of high schools to list in order to avoid thesupplementary round. Finally, students described having more generalconversations, particularly with teachers, about the experience of transi-tioning to high school and what would be expected of them. Asma’sdescription of her interactions with the guidance counselor exemplifiedthe role that school personnel played for many of the gifted and talentedstudents:

Well I talked to her [the guidance counselor], um, like at lunch . . . OrI’d go before school and she’d tell me about what high schools weregood and stuff. There was parent-teacher conferences, and I’d go to talkto her . . . She was really helpful, she know a lot about the high schoolsand like how many people were there and like transportation . . . Shethought what I chose was really good, like because of my average andwhat I got in each class, she thought it was really good.

Gifted and talented students were able to depend on school person-nel to provide complementary information, feedback, and overall guidancewhen making high school choices. This was usually a result of their ownpursuit of this additional support. Aside from requesting clarification about afew administrative aspects of the policy, students often received personalizedrecommendations from school personnel about how to make sensible andappropriate choices given their interests and academic record. These stu-dents’ efforts to use school-based resources to garner concrete informationand suggestions mirrored their behaviors overall. Similar to their conversa-tions with guidance counselors and teachers, at city-wide high school fairs,open houses, and even when looking on websites, gifted and talented stu-dents reported asking detailed questions and researching a school’s academicperformance and other characteristics to see if it aligned with their interestsand goals.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 427

School personnel played a substantially less prominent or instrumen-tal role in the honors-track students’ search for high schools. Only half ofthe eight honors-track interview participants made reference to school-basedinformation sources even once during the course of the interview. Thosestudents who did mention school personnel largely described receiving oper-ational information about application due dates and city-wide events. Emilio,for example, explained that teachers and guidance counselors merely servedto distribute the High School Directory and the application form. Whenprobed if they offered any instructions or advice, Emilio noted:

[they told us to] look over it [the Directory] over the summer and choosewisely . . . We have to read, study it over, and choose our high schoolsthat we wanted to apply for. Then in eighth grade they gave us a highschool application article and then we fill it out, and we hand it in.

In a few instances, the Latino honors-track students described seekingout guidance counselors’ or teachers’ advice about which high schools toconsider in a fashion similar to the gifted-and-talented-track students. Yet,these random moments of guidance, occurring in isolation, were insufficientto stimulate the development of a coherent orientation and correspondingstrategy for securing high-quality high school placements. As the discussionof the role of family will show, the school-based guidance that gifted and tal-ented students got supplemented an extensive degree of family involvement.By comparison, high-performing children of Latin American immigrantslacked parallel home-based supports. As a result, without a consistent align-ment between home and school messages promoting a common goal, thepotential impact of school personnel’s direction toward higher quality highschools was severely diluted.

School Selection Criteria

The rich literature on the reasons that parents choose schools in the contextof choice programs has shown that all parents, regardless of socioeco-nomic status or racial/ethnic background, have consistently named academicfactors as their primary reasons for choosing a school for their child(Buckley & Schneider, 2007; Hamilton & Guin, 2005; Schneider et al., 2000).Discipline/safety, transportation/proximity, and religion/values are otherfrequently cited reasons. Students’ preferences, on the other hand, havereceived almost no scholarly attention before they reach college-going age.

Findings about the school characteristics that eighth-grade studentsconsidered followed and further extended the patterns outlined by thedata related to the roles of peers and school personnel. Gifted and tal-ented students focused almost exclusively on a series of academic qualitieswhile high performing honors-track students looked narrowly at the most

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

428 C. Sattin-Bajaj

readily accessible academic feature: admissions criteria. The normative forcesoperating within the gifted and talented class were in full view when thesestudents described their reasons for choosing high schools.

Without exception, gifted and talented students laid out a nearly identi-cal rationale for winnowing the 700 possibilities to a maximum of 12 schools.Aside from specialized high schools that use an exam score as the sole admis-sions criterion, for a school even to merit consideration by gifted and talentedstudents, it had to restrict admission to students who had earned a minimumof an 85 in all four core seventh-grade classes (English language arts, math,social studies, and science) and scored at or above proficiency (“level three”)on state tests. Once meeting this minimum threshold, students also consid-ered the number of advanced placement courses offered, opportunities toearn college credits, the caliber of colleges and universities that graduatesattend, and SAT and Regents exam scores.

Only after these “academic” criteria were satisfied would gifted and tal-ented students begin to consider a school’s career focus or theme. Last, theyfactored in how popular a school was, how many applicants it had in pre-vious years, and what classmates and other people said about the school’sreputation—favoring those schools that were highly competitive, had manymore applicants than available spots, and had a “good” reputation. Monishasummarized the approach taken by most of her classmates in the gifted andtalented track:

Some of the most popular schools are School X and Stuyvesant in thespecialized. So I started off with that first and then basically [looked at]the programs they offered and also how many people get accepted andhow many people apply. So the ones that people apply more to, it’s like,I would assume that more people would go there because it’s a betterschool. And then also the Progress Report ratings.

High performing Latino students repeatedly expressed their desire toattend “good” high schools. Yet, unlike their counterparts in the gifted andtalented track who searched extensively for a range of data points to deter-mine whether a school met their academic requirements, these studentsrelied on only one indicator before deciding that a school passed muster.High performing Latino students in honors-track classes repeatedly cited theadmissions criteria that were provided for each school in the Directory asthe decisive factor. Jordan, the U.S.-born son of Mexican immigrant parentsin one of the honors classes, exemplified this practice in his description ofthe logic he used for selecting schools:

I picked most of the top schools, so not top but like smart schools. LikeSchool H, it was my number one. I read in the book; it said you neededa 90 average which was like pretty good . . . in the book it says like

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 429

standards they want. For example, 90 average, the programs in it, all thatstuff . . . [What is] important to me are the standards of the school. If Ihave a 70 average I am not going to go to a 90 average school becauseI am not going to, like, make it. So I thought to myself, I have a goodaverage to get into a good school.

Because high-performing honors students considered fewer academicfeatures of a school, they used career and thematic focus more frequentlythan gifted and talented students to narrow down the large number ofchoices available. Additionally, they mentioned sports and after-school activ-ities and knowing people attending or applying to the school as importantconsiderations. Their more superficial or passive engagement in the processof identifying appropriate high schools overall was apparent in their morelimited search for data on schools’ academic performance. Moreover, theylacked the level of family involvement and family emphasis on academicsthat helped gifted and talented students generate and employ an institutionalcompass and a multiply reinforced orientation.

Family Involvement

The role of family members in students’ choice experiences constitutes thefinal and in many ways most significant piece of the puzzle explaining dif-ferences in gifted-and-talented-track and honors-track students’ experienceswith high school choice in New York City. Students described a range ofparental behaviors that could be classified into four categories: instrumen-tal involvement, directive involvement, symbolic involvement, and limitedinvolvement. Instrumental parent involvement included parents searchingindependently for information about schools, activating their social networksto request advice and suggestions from friends, work colleagues, familymembers or neighbors, and spending time working with their children todetermine appropriate school options. Directive parent involvement con-sisted of parents explicitly instructing students about which schools theycould and could not apply to—but this was not always accompanied byoversight and enforcement. Symbolic involvement was exhibited in the formof encouraging words about school generally and exhortations to do well inschool or to “choose wisely” but in the absence of concrete ideas or supportsfor identifying and choosing acceptable schools. Finally, the classification oflimited involvement was applied to cases where students’ primary referencesto parents were restricted to their signing the application or asking if theyhad turned it in on time; examples of limited involvement could also includeparents who made generalized, nondirective statements about schools. Otherfamily members, particularly siblings, but also aunts, uncles, grandparents,and cousins played a variety of roles spanning from gatekeeper (ensuringthat students did not apply to “bad schools”) to financial supporter (payingfor classes to prepare for the specialized high school admissions test).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

430 C. Sattin-Bajaj

Students in the gifted and talented track reported the greatest amountof parent and family participation in the high school application process,both in terms of instrumental and directive involvement. They saw theirparents take on the application process as an important educational respon-sibility, and they dedicated days and evenings to learning about schoolingoptions and how best to position their children for admission to competi-tive high schools. Beyond accompanying their children to high school fairs,open houses, and meetings with guidance counselors, student respondentsdescribed parents calling high schools on their own, speaking with cowork-ers and friends, and conducting Internet research to find out specific detailsabout schools, mostly related to their academic outcomes. Their parents alsohad concrete ideas about which schools were acceptable, and in some casestheir opinions conflicted with those of their children. Monisha’s descrip-tion of her mother’s role was typical of the gifted and talented students’accounts:

Well, she [mother] also came to open houses and she gave her opinion onwhich schools were better . . . She liked Stuyvesant and Townsend Harristhe best, but she like Bard too because it was smaller and is situatedinside LaGuardia College and so it’s like a more open environment . . .

the class sizes were smaller so there was [sic] more teachers and she likedthat too. But she liked Stuyvesant the best . . . I wanted to go to fashiondesigning school too. My mom said no. And I had all auditions for thatbut then my mom didn’t let me go to the audition. She wants me to be adoctor, so . . .

Siblings, cousins, and other relatives were also influential figures ingifted and talented students’ choice decisions. Older siblings and cousinswho had experience choosing high schools offered advice and opinions,connected students to their friends in different high schools, and generallyserved as sounding boards for anxious eighth graders awaiting their results.In the case of Salman, a second generation Bangladeshi student, an unclecovered the cost of a preparatory class in order to improve his chances toscoring high enough on the SHSAT to be admitted to Stuyvesant, whichhis cousin had attended. For Asma, an older sister guided her through theprocess and helped in multiple ways:

Another person [who helped me] would be my sister because she knewit from the top of her head, like, she already had a plan for me what highschools I would apply to. So, and then she told me, “Do you have thisdown?” “Do you have this down?” “Do you have this school down?” Andthen she actually knew a lot because her . . . from her middle school alot of friends went to different high schools and she kept in contact withthem and she knew a lot about their schools and how it was and howgood it was.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 431

Children of low-income immigrants from Mexico, Ecuador, theDominican Republic, and other parts of Latin America in the honors trackoffered a uniform picture of parents who had minimal understanding of thehigh school choice process, what was expected of them and their eighth-grade students or what high school options existed across the city. Students’references to parent participation in high school choice fell overwhelminglyinto the category of limited involvement although some heterogeneity wasfound within this broad group of parents based on the parents’ time inthe United States and if the student was the first in the family to partici-pate in high school choice. These parents’ behaviors were consistent withwhat has been well documented in the research literature with regard to theways in which Latin American immigrant parents with limited education tendto support their children’s education: through encouragement, home-basedactivities, and a focus on cultivating their children’s moral development.Academic matters tend to be left to education professionals who are seen asbetter trained to resolve school-related issues (Delgado-Gaitan, 1992; Reese,Balzano, Gallimore, & Goldenberg, 1995; Valdes, 1996).

The traditional parental involvement practices of low-income LatinAmerican immigrants played out in various ways in the context of highschool choice in New York City. For example, Maribel, a high perform-ing Dominican-born student and only child described her mother’s limitedcomprehension of the choice process. Her response to a standard interviewquestion about parents’ roles and understanding of high school choice wasrepresentative of what many other children of Latin American immigrantsexpressed:

Um, she knows that you’re supposed to put the school that you want togo to and if they accept you they tell you in April . . . She doesn’t knowthat much. She only knows that you put [the schools] . . . and then theytell you if you are accepted. ‘Cause she only cares like if where you wantto go that’s where will accept you.

In a few instances, students mentioned that their Latin Americanimmigrant parents had independently inquired about high schools or sharedunsolicited opinions. Inquiries tended to be related to administrative aspectsof the process such as when the application was due and whether or notthe student had submitted the application on time. These parents wereoften singularly focused on ensuring that their child was following the rulesset forth by school personnel regarding the application procedures—anorientation that corresponds to many low-income Latin American immi-grants’ well-established conception of their principal role as moral educatorswho must teach their children to be respectful and comply with behavioralstandards, customs, and traditions (Delgado-Gaitan, 1992; Reese et al., 1995;Valdes, 1996).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

432 C. Sattin-Bajaj

Latino students in the honors track reported that their parents were mostconcerned about a school’s safety and distance from home. However, theirparents’ knowledge about schools was very basic and was usually based onhearsay and rumors from friends and neighbors about the local high schools.When a student had an older sibling attending high school, his/her parentsnearly always expressed a preference that he/she attend the same school,regardless of what the student wanted or had heard about its safety andacademic quality. The only notable exceptions to this pattern were when anolder child had dropped out; then, parents would advise against applyingthere.

Although different in nature from limited involvement, the parents whoengaged in forms of symbolic involvement offered few opinions or toolsthat could be applied in the context of high school choice either. Symbolicinvolvement was a unique aspect of the role that some Latin American immi-grant parents played in their children’s choice experiences. Consonant withanthropological studies that have highlighted the significance of “consejos”or advice from elders as part of the child socialization process in Mexicanand other Latin American cultures (Reese et al., 1995; Valdes, 1996), studentsdescribed receiving encouragement from parents to do well academicallyand choose “wisely.” Jordan, the high-performing son of Mexican immigrantsin the honors track recounted his parents’ role in the following way: “Theyare like, ‘Just, just get into a good school, pass, do, like, your hardest, tryyour best.’” When asked if his parents knew how to get into a “good” school,he replied, “I have no idea; I don’t think so.”

In the case of Jasmin, another second generation, high performingDominican student, both parents offered separate but similarly symbolicforms of encouragement:

She [Mother] was like, “Don’t choose a school that’s far away. Choosesomething that you like and something that’ll be a comfort to you.” . . .

My dad, he’s like, “Choose a school that is going to benefit you in thefuture, like something you like.” So that’s what he said.

The support, motivation and encouragement these students receivedfrom their parents did not furnish them with concrete information aboutschools or tactical strategies to improve their chances of being acceptedto their top choices. Furthermore, the rare exchanges that did take placebetween eighth graders and their Latin American immigrant parents weredevoid of discussion about students’ educational interests or aspirations. As aresult, these students were generally left to their own devices to determineto which high schools to apply or they had to seek out advice from othersources such as school personnel, friends, or other family members.

Many children of Latin American immigrants turned to older siblingsand cousins with experience in New York City high schools for assistance

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 433

choosing high schools. Jordan espoused a similar perspective. Although hewas aware that the local-zoned high school from which his brother justbarely graduated had a notorious reputation for low performance and gangviolence, and despite his expressed desire to attend a “smart school” thatcorresponded to his high grades, in the end, Jordan included the school onhis application. He did so because he felt confident he would be able tograduate from there like his brother had and saw it as a last resort:

Um, my brother helped out a bit. He’s like just go to that school. Youcould pick [local zoned high school where brother went] if you want, it’snot that great but you know . . . yeah that’s the only thing, there are a lotof bad kids . . . I put it . . . Since my brother graduated there, why notme? If he could do it, I could do it.

When Jordan was eventually matched to this high school, he was deeplydisappointed and immediately submitted a request for an appeal. In August,he was despondent when his appeal request was denied by the NYCDOE.His parents could not understand his disappointment because the localzoned high school was around the corner from his house and his brotherhad eventually earned his diploma after 5 years.

DISCUSSION

Peers, school personnel guidance, school selection criteria and familyinvolvement each constituted a discrete factor by which the high schoolchoice experiences of middle class, Asian-origin students in the gifted andtalented program at IS 725 and the low-income Latino students in the middleschool’s honors track differed. Analysis of each individual factor providesinsight into how students responded to the task of identifying and selectinghigh schools. When considered together, as elements of a whole, a morenuanced portrait of students’ engagement with the choice process emergesand the broader significance of the variation in their approaches can beunderstood.

Middle-class Asian-origin students in the gifted and talented track at IS725 developed a precise approach to deciphering the high school choicepuzzle that combined a detailed understanding of the policy, extensiveknowledge about school offerings, use of data to compare school per-formance, and substantive input from family members, peers, and schoolpersonnel. This composition of elements formed what I have been callingan institutional compass, which, coupled with a focused goal of admissionto a limited number of high performing high schools, or a multiply rein-forced orientation, helped a comparatively large number of the gifted andtalented students secure academically rigorous high school placements. The

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

434 C. Sattin-Bajaj

tight harmony of their social and institutional contexts facilitated the creationand enforcement of shared behavioral norms (a uniform institutional com-pass) and adoption of strict criteria for assessing a high school’s attractiveness(a multiply reinforced orientation).

By contrast, the similarly high performing children of poor LatinAmerican immigrants in the honors track manifested more passiveapproaches to choice which reflected their lack of institutional compass anda diffuse orientation, or the absence of a coherent set of choice criteria. Thecumulative, coordinated supports that gifted and talented students receivedfrom their peers, school personnel, and family members were almost entirelyabsent in the lives of the Latino youth. Rather, there was a lack of cross-pollination among the developmental spheres of the Latino honors studentsat IS 725, and their disjointed, inconsistent, and generally solitary high schoolchoice experiences tended to be accompanied by assignment to lower per-forming high schools. These distinct processes and outcomes simultaneouslysuggest the benefits for adolescents participating in high school choice orother educational transitions of such alignment of developmental contextsand the drawbacks for youth who do so without it.

Integrated Developmental and Social Spheres

Research in the field of social stratification has powerfully demonstrated therole of parental education and income (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Jencks et al.,1972) and more recently, differences in cultural and social capital (Lareau,2003; Smrekar & Goldring, 1999; Stevens, 2007), in intergenerational trans-fer of privilege. The results presented in this article do not deviate fromthe previously established trends. However, I find that cultural, socioeco-nomic, and nativity factors alone cannot adequately explain differences instudents’ school choice behaviors and experiences—in their possession anduse of an institutional compass, their development of clear set of choicecriteria (multiply reinforced orientation), and in their varying degrees ofsuccess in obtaining high performing high schools placements. Instead, Ipoint to the interconnectedness of several social and development milieuxthat functioned to guide the gifted and talented-track students’ behaviorsinstrumentally and contribute to their formation of an institutional compassand well-articulated goals or what I term a multiply reinforced orientation.

Gifted and talented students’ successful development of an institutionalcompass and a multiply reinforced orientation depended on the existence,transmission, and enactment of certain values and beliefs associated witheffective school-search strategies. The prominent role that parents, siblings,and other relatives played in the gifted and talented students’ school choiceexperiences reflected an aspect of their families’ habitus or “matrix of percep-tions, appreciations, and actions,” Bourdieu (1971, p. 183) that correspondedwith the NYCDOE’s normative assumptions of parental involvement. This

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 435

correspondence of beliefs and behaviors proved to be a critical compo-nent of the students’ institutional compass. Next, the weight given to highschools’ academic characteristics in the formation of their multiply rein-forced orientation, which was at least in part a product of parents’ emphasison these school qualities, encouraged the gifted and talented students tofocus on activities that would improve their chances of being assigned to anacademically rigorous, high-performing high school.

The development of gifted and talented students’ multiply reinforcedorientation toward high performing high schools and use of a shared insti-tutional compass based on clear behavioral standards is reminiscent of thecollective efficacy that Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls (1997) documentedin their study of neighborhood and violent crime rates in Chicago. Theresearchers found a positive association between strong, supportive rela-tionships among neighbors and lower crime rates, and they understoodthe multiplicative value of well-aligned neighborhood structures, values, andprocesses to produce a collective efficacy. The positive social control prac-ticed in some of the neighborhoods that Sampson and colleagues studiedwas parallel in many ways to the consistently communicated messages andresources made available to gifted and talented students by peers, school per-sonnel, and family members. In the end, the fusion of home- and school-levelsupports created a protective and nurturing cocoon that guided gifted andtalented students in their exploration and pursuit of high schools that werebest suited to their interests and would help them achieve academic and pro-fessional goals. The high school assignments provide strong evidence of theimplications of access to coordinated ecological and development spheres(Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and support structures, or a lack thereof, for stu-dents’ successful negotiation of the choice process and potential long-termacademic and developmental outcomes more broadly.

Social Closure in the Development of a Multiply ReinforcedOrientation

A number of factors contributed to the gifted and talented students’strategic engagement in the choice process that were not present in theirLatino counterparts’ choice experiences. Powerful messages about accept-able school choices informed the multiply reinforced orientation that nearlyevery student in the gifted and talented track adopted. Yet, in additionto repeated messages, specific structures were needed to transform normsinto a more solidified orientation. The cohesive classroom unit created theconditions for social closure (Coleman, 1988) to occur.

Students in the gifted and talented class all subscribed to the same setof beliefs about what constituted a good high school. Perhaps more impor-tantly, they shared a firm notion of which schools were unacceptable. Thestructure of their schooling—namely, the fact that they had been together

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

436 C. Sattin-Bajaj

since sixth grade, traveled as a class from period to period, and had lim-ited contact with students from other classes or tracks—created conditionsin which social closure, and by extension, the exchange of social capital,could naturally occur. The social closure stemming from gifted and tal-ented students’ tightly knit, highly regulated classroom community facilitatedthe reinforcement of norms. These norms served as the glue that meldedhome and school-based elements into their particular orientation toward onlyacademically rigorous, elite high schools.

High achieving Latino students gave no indication that the social closureand concomitant norms that existed for gifted-and-talented-track studentswere operating in their classes, despite having similar school-based con-ditions. A core difference between these students’ experiences hinges onthe fact that for the gifted and talented students, peer-enforced norms werenearly identical to those being transmitted by family members at home. As aresult, the messages they received about schools and choosing were stableand reinforcing. By comparison, there was little constant in the information,advice, and perspectives that high achieving Latino students were exposedto at home and school (if they were exposed to any at all).

Student interviews indicate the benefits of overlapping and mutuallyfortifying support structures that bridge students’ multiple social and devel-opment contexts. A well-integrated network of supports can help themappreciate and internalize the significance of high school choice and ulti-mately understand how to make academically beneficial choices. This wasthe case for gifted and talented students. On the other hand, uncoordinatedor sporadic messages and guidance may prevent students from fully takingadvantage of choice options. Although many of the high performing, lowerincome Latino students shared their gifted and talented peers’ ideas aboutwhat constituted a desirable high school, these ideas did not exist withina complete or consistent strategy. Nor were they sufficient to translate intonecessarily positive actions, choices, and outcomes.

IMPLICATIONS

A number of factors contribute to students’ ultimate high school placementsin New York City including their seventh-grade academic performance, atten-dance, and their own ordered preferences. Yet, despite being comparablecandidates for admission to academically competitive high schools (basedon seventh-grade standardized test scores and final course grades), high-performing students in the magnet gifted and talented program at IS 725 weresignificantly more likely than the high-performing children of lower incomeLatin American immigrants in the same school to be assigned to the mostselective, highest performing high schools. The immediate and long-termimplications of the gap in these students’ access to high quality educational

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 437

opportunities resulting from New York City’s mandatory high school choiceprocess remain to be seen. However, city-wide and national trends in edu-cational achievement as well as life course outcomes associated with schoolquality point to some potential consequences for the lower income Latinoyouth of attending lower performing schools. These range from decreasedlikelihood of graduating high school (Campaign for Fiscal Equity, 2010) ormeeting state college readiness standards (Fructer, Hester, Mokhtar, & Shahn,2012), which in turn are associated with lower college completion rates andpotential lifetime earnings differentials (U.S. Department of Education, 2011;U.S. Department of Labor, 2010). What is more, these results showing thatmany of the low-income Latino students applied to and were assigned to lessselective high schools than they were theoretically eligible to attend mirrorspatterns of academic “undermatch” that have become a growing concernamong scholars and policy makers examining the college completion issue(Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009; Hoxby & Avery, 2012; Roderick, Coca,& Nagaoka, 2011; Smith, Pender, Howell, & Hurwitz, 2012). In fact, evidenceindicates that the problem might be particularly acute among Latino students(Roderick et al., 2008) who are overrepresented in 2-year colleges and havecomparatively low college completion rates (Kelly, Schneider, & Carey, 2010;USDOE, 2011).

Although high school choice in New York City—with its unique match-ing algorithm and single school assignment—is quite different from thecollege choice process in the United States, the results from this study mayshed light on some of the factors contributing to the undermatching phe-nomenon at the college level. Furthermore, the findings presented aboutthe range of supports that facilitated gifted-and-talented-track students’ aca-demically oriented school selections on the one hand, and the lack of suchresources and supports in the lives of the lower income Latino youth on theother hand, identify possible points of intervention that could reduce aca-demic undermatch or other barriers to access at all levels of education wherechoice exists. Straightforward policy solutions may provide a response tomany of the issues plaguing school choice in New York City and elsewhere,and a number of potential changes to policy and practice are suggestedbelow. Although these are directed to New York City’s high school choiceenvironment they may be easily adapted to alternative choice contexts.

Improved Information and Guidance Supports

Better, more accessible information and guidance are essential to improvethe equity potential of New York City’s school choice policy, and theseimprovements should happen at both the district- and school-levels. Districtsshould consider developing a stand-alone entity or multiple entities dedi-cated to working with families on school choice. The Family Resource Centerin Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, has staff on hand year-round to

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

438 C. Sattin-Bajaj

work individually with parents and students who, per district policy, arerequired to participate in a school lottery. Schools like IS 725 serving high-needs populations should also be given funds to cover the cost of additionalschool personnel, overtime for guidance staff, and/or family outreach andengagement activities in order to more adequately meet their informationand guidance needs and to mitigate the impacts of city-wide imbalances infamily resources and knowledge about choice.

Middle schools in New York City have full autonomy when it comes todetermining what, when, and how much information will be disseminatedto students and parents about school choice. To ensure that students andparents receive, at a minimum, basic information about the application pro-cess and the city-wide school options, the NYCDOE should develop clear,manageable requirements for middle school–based choice activities. A top-down mandate might be necessary to ensure that schools dedicate sufficienttime and resources to informing and counseling students about high schoolchoice in the current accountability-laden landscape. These mandates shouldbe paired with some formal oversight and enforcement (e.g., a measure offidelity of implementation of the choice policy factored into school eval-uations) in order to promote compliance. Such mandates might naturallylead to a reshuffling of organizational tasks and responsibilities. However,to maximize professional expertise dedicated to supporting students’ choicemaking, principals should be encouraged to find ways to free up guidancecounselors to spend more time engaged in individual counseling sessionsand parent workshops, which they tend to enjoy more and are likely to bemore beneficial to students.

Leverage School Structures to Promote Shared Peer Experience

All students, regardless of their achievement level or track, have the poten-tial to work together and provide mutual support when faced with the taskof choosing high schools. Schools should build on their existing structuresto facilitate greater peer connectedness and collaboration during the entireschool choice process—from school searches to application decisions andreceipt of high school assignments. Schools should use the classroom, homeroom, advisory group, or other student grouping and convert it into a spacefor information sharing, encouragement, and norm construction among class-mates about what smart, appropriate high school choices look like. Althoughthis happened organically for students in the gifted and talented track at IS725, administrators and teachers might consider taking concrete actions tostimulate something similar for all students such as group activities and dis-cussion about how to access information, which school characteristics matter,and why school selections are made. This might provide a particularly valu-able source of information and support for students who have few resourcesoutside of the school building with whom to discuss and plan school choices.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 439

It should also not be taken for granted that ability tracking likewhat was in place at IS 725 is best or most equitable for all children.On the contrary, this study identifies some potentially major shortcom-ings of grouping students in this way. Therefore, school-based discussionsabout how to leverage structures, organizational features, and groupingpatterns should also include serious consideration of eliminating trackingentirely.

Revise Matching Policy to Take Into Account Student Disadvantage

Policies aimed at intervening in the marketplace tend to be more con-troversial and potentially more difficult to get passed and implementedthan those aimed at the demand side. Yet, recent initiatives at the post-secondary level to expand low-income students’ opportunities for collegeset a powerful example for the types of policies and actions that can betaken to address longstanding opportunity and educational access gaps.In response to President Obama’s call to action, over 80 colleges and univer-sities made commitments to expand recruitment efforts, increase need-basedfinancial aid of low-income students, set goals for larger shares of low-income students, and focus on improving low-income students’ outcomesonce enrolled. Similar efforts can be made in the K–12 choice arena wherebydisadvantaged students receive preference or certain selective high schoolshave a “weighted” lottery design to attract and admit a greater number ofunderrepresented students. If choice is to be taken seriously as responseto long-standing educational disadvantage and limited opportunity, the wayin which students are “matched” in New York City and elsewhere must bereconsidered.

Disparities in educational access and attainment in New York City andnationwide make clear that the promise of school choice to promote greaterequity has yet to be realized. Future research should test the efficacy of thesuggested policies or a range of other school-, family- and community-levelinterventions to build knowledge and skills to help students and parentsstrategically select schools in the context of choice plans. These skills couldbecome lifelong assets employed across a range of experiences including,but not limited to, college choice.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Adapted from Unaccompanied Minors: Immigrant Youth, School Choice, andthe Pursuit of Equity by Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, 2014, Cambridge, MA: HarvardEducation Press. Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of HarvardCollege. Adapted with permission.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

440 C. Sattin-Bajaj

NOTES

1. Starting with the entering ninth-grade class in the fall of 2008, all students in New York State arerequired to pass five Regents exams with a score of 65 or better in order to graduate.

2. This excludes the eight high schools, the so-called “Specialized high schools” includingStuyvesant High School and Bronx High School for Science, that admit students solely based on theirscore on the Specialized High School Admissions Test.

3. All names have been changed.

REFERENCES

Andre-Bechely, L. (2005). Could it be otherwise? Parents and the inequities of publicschool choice. New York, NY: Routledge.

Arsen, D., & Ni, Y. (2011). Shaking up public schools with competition: Arethey changing the way they spend money? In M. Berends, M. Cannata, &E. B. Goldring (Eds.), School choice and school improvement (pp. 193–213).Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Bailey, M. J., & Dynarski, S. (2011). Inequality in postsecondary education. InG. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality,schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 117–131). New York, NY: Russell SageFoundation.

Ball, S. J. (1993). Education markets, choice, and social class: The market as a classstrategy in the UK and the USA. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14(1),3–19.

Belfield, C. R., & Levin, H. M. (2002). “The Effects of Competition on EducationalOutcomes: A Review of U.S. Evidence,” National Center for the Study of thePrivatization of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York,NY.

Betts, J. R. (2009). The competitive effects of charter schools on traditional pub-lic schools. In M. Berends, M. G. Springer, D. Ballou, & H. J. Wahberg(Eds.), Handbook of research on school choice (pp. 209–226). New York, NY:Routledge.

Bifulco, R., & Ladd, H. F. (2007). School choice, racial segregation, and test-scoregaps: Evidence from North Carolina’s charter school program. Journal of PolicyAnalysis and Management, 26(1), 31–56.

Blau, P., & Duncan, O. D. (1967). The American occupational structure. New York,NY: Wiley.

Booker, K., Zimmer, R., & Buddin, R. (2005). The effects of charter schools onschool peer composition (Working paper WR-306-EDU). Santa Monica, CA: RandCorporation.

Bourdieu, P. (1971). Intellectual field and creative project. In M. K. D. Young(Ed.), Knowledge and control: New directions for the sociology of education (pp.161–188). London, UK: Collier Macmillan.

Bowen, W. G., Chingos, M. M., & McPherson, M. S. (2009). Crossing the finishline: Completing college at America’s public universities. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Brantlinger, E. (2003). Dividing classes: How the middle class negotiates andrationalizes school advantage. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 441

Brofenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by natureand design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Buckley, J., & Sattin-Bajaj, C. (2011). Are ELL students underrepresented in charterschools? Demographic trends in New York City, 2006-2008. Journal of SchoolChoice, 5(1), 40–65.

Buckley, J., & Schneider, M. (2007). Charter schools: Hope or hype? Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

Buckley, J., Schneider, M., & Shang, Y. (2005). Are charter school students harder toeducate? Evidence from Washington, D.C. Educational Evaluation and PolicyAnalysis, 27(4), 365–380.

Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. (2010, September). Diploma dilemma: Rising stan-dards, the Regents diploma, and schools that beat the odds. Report prepared bythe Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

Center for Education Reform. (2011). Charter School Law. Retrieved from http://www.edreform.com/issues/choice-charter-schools/laws-legislation/

Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). (2009). Multiple choice:Charter school performance in 16 States (Technical report). Stanford, CA: Centerfor Research on Education Outcomes.

Coleman, J. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. The AmericanJournal of Sociology, 94, S95–S120.

Corbin, J. M., & Strauss, J. M. (2007). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques andprocedures for developing grounded theory (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Corcoran, S. P., & Levin, H. M. (2011). School choice and competition in New YorkCity schools. In J. A. O’Day, C. S. Bitter, & L. M. Gomez (Eds.), Education reformin New York City: Ambitious change in the nation’s most complex school system(pp.199–224) Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Crosnoe, R., Cavanagh, S., & Elder, G. H., Jr. (2003). Adolescent friendships as aca-demic resources: The intersection of friendship, race, and school disadvantage.Sociological Perspectives, 46(3), 331–352.

Crosnoe, R., & Needham, B. (2004). Holism, contextual variability, and the study offriendships in adolescent development. Child Development, 75(1), 264–279.

Cullen, J. B., Jacob, B. A., & Levitt, S. (2005). The impact of school choice onstudent outcomes: An analysis of the Chicago public schools. Journal of PublicEconomics, 89(5–6), 729–760.

Dee, T., & Fu, H. (2004). Do charter schools skim students or drain resources?Economics of Education Review, 23(3), 259–271.

Delgado-Gaitan, C. (1992). School matters in the Mexican-American home:Socializing children to education. American Educational Research Journal,29(3), 495–513.

Duncan, G. J., & Magnuson, K. (2011). The nature and impact of early achieve-ment skills, attention skills, and behavior problems. In G. J. Duncan & R. J.Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality, schools, and children’slife chances (pp. 47–70). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Eccles, J. S., Wigfield, A., & Schiefele, U. (1998). Motivation to succeed. InN. Eisenberg (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Social, emotional, andpersonality development (Vol. 3) (pp. 1017–1094). New York, NY: Wiley.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

442 C. Sattin-Bajaj

Education Commission of the States. (2011). Open enrollment: 50-state report.Retrieved from http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=268

Egalite, A. J. (2013). Measuring competitive effects from school voucher programs:A systematic review. Journal of School Choice, 7(4), 443–464.

Fiske, E. B., & Ladd, H. F. (2000). When schools compete: A cautionary tale (Workingpaper). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Fleming, D. J., Cowen, J. M., Witte, J. F., & Wolf, P. J. (2013). Similar students,different choices: Who uses a school voucher in an otherwise similar populationof students? Education and Urban Society. doi:10.1177/0013124513511268

Fructer, N. M., Hester, M., Mokhtar, C., & Shahn, Z. (2012). Is demography stilldestiny? Neighborhood demographics and public high school students’ readinessfor college in New York City. Providence, RI: Annenberg Institute for SchoolReform, Brown University.

Fry, R., & Taylor, P. (2012). The rise of residential segregation by income.Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, Social & Demographic TrendsUnit. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2012/08/Rise-of-Residential-Income-Segregation-2012.2.pdf

Fuligni, A., Eccles, J., Barber, B., & Clements, P. (2001). Early adolescent peer ori-entation and adjustment during high school. Developmental Psychology, 37(1),28–36.

Goldring, E., & Hausman, C. (1999). Reasons for parental choice of urban schools.Journal of Education Policy, 4(5), 469–490.

Hamilton, L. S., & Guin, K. (2005). Understanding how families choose schools. In J.R. Betts & T. Loveless (Eds.), Getting choice right: Ensuring equity and efficiencyin education policy (pp. 40–60). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Hemphill, C., & Nauer, K. (2009). The new marketplace: How small-school reformsand school choice have reshaped New York City’s high schools. New York, NY:Center for New York City Affairs, The New School.

Hoxby, C. M. (2003). School choice and school productivity: Could school choice bea tide that lifts all boats? In C. M. Hoxby (Ed.), Economics of school choice (pp.287–341). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Hoxby, C. M., & Avery, C. (2012). The missing “one-offs”: The hidden supply of high-achieving, low-income students (NBER Working Paper No. 18586). Cambridge,MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Hoxby, C. M., & Murarka, S. (2009). Charter schools in New York City: Who enrollsand how they affect their students’ achievement (NBER Working Paper 14852).Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Jencks, C., Smith, M., Acland, H., Bane, M. J., Cohen, D., Gintis, H., . . . Michelson,S. (1972). Inequality: A reassessment of the effect of family and schooling inAmerica. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Kelly, A., Schneider, M., & Carey, K. (2010). Rising to the challenge: Hispanic col-lege graduation rates as a national priority. Washington, DC: The AmericanEnterprise Institute.

Kirk, D. S., & Sampson, R. J. (2011). Crime and the production of safe schools. InG. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality,schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 397–418). New York, NY: Russell SageFoundation.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 443

Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press.

LeCompte, M. D., & Schensul, J. D. (1999). Analyzing and interpreting ethnographicdata. New York, NY: Altamira Press.

Levine, L. (2012). The U.S. income distribution and mobility: Trends and interna-tional comparisons (Congressional Research Service Report 7-5700). Retrievedfrom http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42400.pdf

Meade, B., Gaytán, F., Fergus, E., & Noguera, P. (2009). Making the grade in NewYork City schools: Progress report grades and Black and Latino students. NewYork, NY: The Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, Steinhardt School ofCulture, Education and Human Development, New York University.

Medina, J. (2010, February 5). At top city schools, lack of diversity persists. The NewYork Times, Cityroom blog.

Miron, G., & Urschel, J. (2010). Equal or fair? A study of revenues and expendituresin American charter schools. Boulder, CO & Tempe, AZ: Education and thePublic Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved from http://epicpolicy.org/publication/charter-school-finance

Nathanson, L., Corcoran, S., & Baker-Smith, C. (2013). High school choice in NYC:A report on the school choices and placements of low-achieving students. NewYork, NY: The Research Alliance for New York City Schools & The Institute forEducation and Social Policy, New York University.

New York City Department of Education. (2013). For eighth straight year,more than 80 percent of students are admitted to one of their top highschool choices. Retrieved from http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/mediarelations/NewsandSpeeches/2012-2013/031513_eightstraightyear.htm

Ni, Y. (2009). Do traditional public schools benefit from charter school competition?Economics of Education Review, 28(5), 571–584.

Orfield, G., & Frankenberg, E., (2013). Educational delusions? Why choice candeepen inequality and how to make schools fair. Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press.

Orfield, G., Kucsera, J., & Siegel-Hawley, G. (2012). E Pluribus . . . Separation:Deepening double segregation for more students. Los Angeles, CA: Civil RightsProject/Proyecto Derechos Civiles.

Portes, A., & Landolt, P. (1996). The downside of social capital. American Prospect,26 , 18–21.

Ream, R. K. (2003). Counterfeit social capital and Mexican American underachieve-ment. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25(3), 237–262.

Reardon, S. F. (2011). The widening achievement gap between the rich and thepoor: New evidence and possible explanations. In G. J. Duncan & R. J.Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality, schools, and children’slife chances, (pp. 91–116). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Reese, L., Balzano, S., Gallimore, R., & Goldenberg, C. (1995). The concept ofeducación: Latino families and American schooling. International Journal ofEducational Research, 23(1), 57–81.

Roderick, M., Coca, V., & Nagaoka, J. (2011). Potholes on the road to college: Highschool effects in shaping urban students’ participation in college application,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

444 C. Sattin-Bajaj

four-year college enrollment and college match. Sociology of Education, 84(3),178–211.

Roderick, M., Nagaoka, J., Coca, V., Moeller, E., Roddie, K., Gilliam, J., & Patton, D.(2008). From high school to the future: Potholes on the road to college. Chicago,IL: University of Chicago, Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Rothstein, R. (2004). Class and schools. Using social, economic, and educationalreform to close the Black-White achievement gap. Washington, DC: EconomicPolicy Institute.

Saez, E. (2013). Striking it richer: The evolution of top incomes in the United States(Updated with 2011 estimates). Retrieved from http://elsa.berkeley.edu/∼saez/saez-UStopincomes-2011.pdf

Samps, R., Raudenbush, S. W, & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime:A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277, 918–924.

Sattin-Bajaj, C. (2014). Unaccompanied minors: Immigrant youth, school choice andthe pursuit of equity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Schneider, M., Teske, P., & Marschall, M. (2000). Choosing schools: Consumer choiceand the quality of American schools. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Smith, J., Pender, M., Howell, J., & Hurwitz, M. (2012). Getting into college:Postsecondary academic undermatch. The CollegeKeys Compact. Washington,DC: The College Board Advocacy & Policy Center.

Smrekar, C., & Goldring, E. (1999). School choice in urban America: Magnet schoolsand the pursuit of equity. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Stevens, M. L. (2007). Creating a class: College admissions and the education of elites.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Stewart, T., & Wolf, P. J. (2014). The school choice journey: School vouchers and theempowerment of urban families. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Teske, P., Fitzpatrick, J., & Kaplan, G. (2007). Opening doors: Low-income parentssearch for the right school. Seattle, WA: Center on Reinventing Public Education,University of Washington.

Teske, P., Schneider, M., Roch, C., & Marschall, M. (2000). Public school choice: Astatus report. In D. Ravitch (Ed.), City schools: Lessons from New York City (pp.313–365). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2011). Digestof Education Statistics, 2010 (NCES 2011-015).

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsa2009.pdf

Valdes, G. (1996). Con respeto: Bridging the distance between culturally diverse fam-ilies and schools: An ethnographic portrait. New York, NY: Teachers CollegePress

Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics ofcaring. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Wells, A. S. (2002). Why public policy fails to live up to the potential of charter schoolreform: An introduction. In A. S. Wells (Ed.), Where charter school policy fails:The problems of accountability and equity (pp. 1–28). New York, NY: TeachersCollege Press.

Wells, A. S., Holme, J. J., Lopez, A., & Cooper, C. W. (2000). Charter schools and racialand social class segregation: Yet another sorting machine? In R. Kahlenberg

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014

Students’ School Choice Experiences 445

(Ed.), A notion at risk: Preserving education as an engine for social mobility(pp. 169–222). New York, NY: Century Foundation Press.

Wolf, P., Gutmann, B., Eissa, N., Puma, M., & Silverberg, M. (2005). Evaluation ofthe D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program: First year report on participation.Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation andRegional Assistance: U.S. Department of Education.

Wolf, P. J., Kisida, B., Gutmann, B., Puma, M., Rizzo, M., & Eissa, N. (2011).School vouchers in the nation’s capital: Summary of experimental impacts. InM. Berends, M. Cannata, & E. B. Goldring (Eds.), School choice and schoolimprovement (pp. 17–33). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Zimmer, R., Gill, B., Booker, K., Lavertu, S., & Witte, J. F. (2011). Charter schools:Do they cream skim, increase segregation? In M. Berends, M. Cannata, &E. B. Goldring (Eds.), School choice and school improvement (pp. 215–232).Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Car

olyn

Sat

tin-B

ajaj

] at

11:

11 0

8 Se

ptem

ber

2014