Desegregation In A "color-blind" Era: Parents Navigating School Assignment And Choice In Louisville, Ky

Date of Award

6-26-2013

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Cultural Foundations of Education

Advisor(s)

Sari Biklen

Keywords

busing;color-blind racism;cultural reproduction;desegregation;school assignment;school choice

Subject Categories

Educational Sociology | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Sociology

Abstract

This dissertation is a qualitative study of how parents in Louisville, Kentucky navigate the marketplace of schools. The study focuses on how parents choose schools in a metropolitan area where the primary public school district, Jefferson County Public Schools, which was originally racially desegregated by court order, instituted an assignment plan that relies on a measure of race, income and education level in neighborhood clusters to assign students to schools. I argue that this assignment plan, although crafted to increase equity among students, is resisted by parental decision-making. Parents represent this resistance as "color-blind," connected to the logistical and academic needs of their children. The study uses two levels of analysis: a policy analysis that examines the strengths and weaknesses of the assignment plan, and a critical analysis of how parents both understand the plan and use their cultural capital to reproduce their own social location through the school choice process.

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