Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools: Residential Segregation and the Search for a Good School

Chapter 6. Schools, Housing, and the Reproduction of Inequality

169   Chapter 6   Schools, Housing, and the Reproduction of Inequality Annette Lareau S cholarly and popular conversations about inequality often focus on the experience of people living in cities. Yet, suburban communities also vary in the relative affluence of their neighborhoods and school districts. Indeed, recent decades have seen a growth of economic segregation across suburban neighborhoods (Reardon and Bischoff 2011). Suburban school districts today also vary in their budgets, teacher qualifications, and test scores.1 Research also suggests that children’s life chances can be influenced by the character of the schools and neighborhoods in which they live (for neighborhood effects, see Sampson 2012; Sharkey 2013; for the influence of schools and family background on life chances, see Duncan and Murnane 2011).2 One problem, however, is that most research on the influence of neighborhoods and schools begins after families have settled into these different communities (but see Holmes 2002).3 The mechanisms through which parents of different social classes come to live in different suburban neighborhoods are not well understood. Yet any serious effort to reduce inequality would need to try to reduce the segregation of children into different spaces. The key goal of this study is to understand how parents of young children went about selecting a home in a number of suburban areas comprised of multiple school districts. As with 73 percent of American children, the families in this study sent their children to the neighborhood catchment school (U.S. Department of Education 2009).4 Because children attended the local catchment school, once parents chose a residence , they chose a school. Furthermore, the region was characterized by significant levels of inequality in economic development, housing values, parks, libraries, schools, crime, and public services. In general, children 170    Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools of middle-class and upper-middle-class families were concentrated in schools (and the neighborhoods) that were considered the most desirable . Because some schools were widely seen as being better than others, it is important to understand how parents gained access to these highquality schools. In this study, I look at a key moment in the reproduction of inequality: how parents of young children go about selecting a house and a school for their children. Literature Review I consider three alternatives for how parents come to select their homes and hence schools: economic factors, a cultural logic of child rearing, and social networks. One important debate in the study of inequality centers on the degree to which economic factors alone are guiding residential decisions. Some studies focus particularly on the connection between housing values and school decisions, implicitly suggesting that it is the economic value of the home that is key (Dougherty et al. 2009; Bayer and McMillan 2011). Nonetheless, a number of studies (chapter 5, this volume; Rosenblatt and Deluca 2012; Sharkey 2013) suggest that even with payment vouchers for housing, low-income families often settle in high-poverty neighborhoods rather than low-poverty neighborhoods.5 We have less information, however , on the residential decisions of working-class and middle-class families .6 There are also signs that economic factors are far from the only factor driving residential decisions. Because most moves, for example, are short distances, residents seem to have a preference for staying in their current neighborhood rather than looking for the best economic value in the entire region. Also, as Robert Sampson shows (2012), when moving, people disproportionately locate in a place where their former neighbors have taken up residence, suggesting the influence of neighbors in shaping preferences. Second, research on social class and parenting suggests that there are class differences in a cultural logic of child rearing (Lareau 2011; see also Calarco 2011). In Unequal Childhoods, I argued that middle-class parents engaged in concerted cultivation in which they used organized activities , language development, and interventions in institutions to foster the development of children’s talents and skills. By contrast, workingclass parents, who saw looming hardship in adulthood, tried to protect their children by allowing them free time to watch television or play with kin, clarifying their obligations with directives, and trusting professionals to provide appropriate services in institutions (a pattern termed the accomplishment of natural growth). Because the choice of a school is widely seen as a very important moment in child rearing, it is possible that the search process would differ by social class. One might expect middle- Schools, Housing, and the Reproduction of Inequality     171...