Purpose: Research on privileged parents, defined here as those with the economic, social, and educational resources to navigate school choice processes to their advantage, often depicts such parents as anxious about maintaining social mobility, leading them to "opportunity hoard" desirable or academically competitive schools in ways that…

This paper focuses on school choice "within" the public school system in Queensland, Australia. While school choice has typically been framed as a logic of economic rationalism (for middle-class families), in this paper we use Ahmed's concept of the cultural politics of emotion to describe a more complex dimension of choice through…

Public PreK programs are an increasingly popular policy tool to equalize early learning opportunities. Programs can be universally available or targeted to support children's readiness. At the intersection of early childhood and K-12 education, their hybrid status can be difficult for families to negotiate. Based on interviews completed in 2018,…

This article examines a new trend of high school choice in China -- parental choice of emerging international high-school curriculum programs (IHSCPs) recently established by Chinese elite public high schools. We add to the existing critical literature on school choice by providing a detailed empirical analysis of why, how, and under what…

Parents desire several features when choosing a school, but they often compromise on some preferences in favor of others. We develop a novel measure of aggregate preference compromise by examining the discrepancy between ideal preferences and those specified under real-world constraints. Relying on data from a representative sample in Kansas City,…

Existing research has found evidence of widespread anti-Asian bias in the United States, yet limited work has examined whether anti-Asian biases affect parents' school preferences. In this article, using a conjoint experiment, we examine White parents' views on schools with varying percentages of Asian students. We find that respondents strongly…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify decision-making factors from parents of Southeast Rural School District (SRSD) who chose to transfer their children to one of 14 cyber charter schools within Pennsylvania amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This research study utilized a phenomenological design, consisting of qualitative electronic…

The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to examine the decision-making process of K-12 parents living in the Appalachian Highlands who chose to remove their children from traditional public schools to join learning pods (sometimes referred to as pandemic pods) during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to answer this overarching…

What guidance does research provide about how to improve school district performance in the United States? Despite over 30 years of inquiry on the topic of effective districts, existing frameworks are relatively narrow in terms of disciplinary focus (primarily educational leadership perspectives) and research design (primarily qualitative case…

This research examines the reasons why parent(s)/guardian(s) have chosen to enroll their child in a Catholic high school in the New Orleans area. Currently enrollment in Catholic high schools in the area is down post-Hurricane Katrina. This research is a qualitative study utilizing Grounded Theory methodology. An anonymous survey was sent to…

The role of a Catholic school leader is complex, dynamic, and changing, especially in states where parental choice legislation has been enacted. This study utilizes Bolman and Deal's (2017) organizational framework to examine the political nature of the role of the Catholic school leader. Specifically, this study explores the ways the Catholic…

This article uses interest convergence and market-based theories to examine a recently-adopted controlled choice school admissions model intended to desegregate a diverse, urban school district. Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative interviews with advantaged parents who articulated support for controlled choice, we find that these parents'…

Countries increasingly out-contract public education to private providers to inspire competition and development, but there is limited research on the consequences. This article compares the parents' room for active citizenship in public and nonprofit compulsory schools in Norway. It analyses a large-scale parental survey by multi-level…

The purpose of this dissertation was to understand the decision-making process of school choice for Christian parents with preschool through elementary aged children. Hall's et al. (2002) values-based decision-making theory (VBDM) guided this qualitative descriptive study that incorporated two research questions. The two sources of data included…

In a time of proliferated school choice, how do families choose a K-12 setting for their child(ren) in the state of Missouri? For many families the decision may be easy, but for others, they had to experience one educational setting before choosing another to know what they value and prioritize in their child(ren)'s education. This qualitative…