The purpose of this study was to identify students' reasons for choosing to participate in the San Joaquin County Office of Education's Alternative Programs. The major areas studied were (a) curricula, (b) teacher instruction, (c) teacher and student relationship, (d) school climate, and (e) teacher and student ratio. The study also examined the relationship between these areas and their importance in contributing to students attending and remaining in school. Data were gathered from two different sources: (a) student surveys of 104 randomly selected students who have been enrolled in the alternative program for a period of six months and had the opportunity to return to their school district of residence; (b) interviews with 20 randomly selected students who participated in the student survey. Analysis of the data suggested that factors such as subject matter, teacher instruction, teacher and student relationship, school climate, and class size are influential in students choosing to attend and participate in the alternative education program. Evidence supported the notion that many of these factors are interrelated. Data supports the research regarding factors within the classroom that influence students, decisions to attend and participate in school. In addition, data supports the need to provide options to a diverse school population. The study provides recommendations for administrators and teachers of the alternative education program to continue promotion of a positive school culture which may result in positive student outcomes.

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School quality and school choice are two hotly debated issues within current academic research, and the two topics are not wholly disconnected from one another. School quality literature includes debates over the most accurate definition, or definitions, of what constitutes school quality. Research addressing school choice often includes references to issues of school quality, albeit with different conclusions about the level of importance school quality plays in actual school choice decisions. In order to understand families' decisions about schools, one must recognize not only the ways in which perceptions of quality influence choices, but also that school quality and school choice are, at the same time, conceptually distinct topics. Therefore, the primary question guiding my research asks, is there a relationship between families perceptions of quality education and the school choices they ultimately make. More specifically, my research first explores how families determine what constitutes a quality school, and second, how that informs the schools they select for their children. I examine six distinct types of school choice options families may choose for their children: private, neighborhood public, magnet, charter, non-neighborhood public, or homeschooling. I investigate whether or not family assessments of quality vary along racial or socioeconomic lines and whether such variation explains some differences in families school choices by these sociodemographic characteristics. I explore families behavior during their search for their children school to determine if any racial or socioeconomic variation exists in how different families conduct this search. I also examine factors that may prevent some families from actualizing their ideals of school quality in their choices. In other words, are there obstacles to particular school choices for families from diverse social backgrounds? Data in this study comes from the Pennsylvania and Metropolitan Area Survey, collected with the Philadelphia Indicators project and Temple University Institute of Public Affairs. This survey includes households within five Pennsylvania counties; Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties as well as four counties in New Jersey: Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, and Salem counties. This sample includes only households including at least one school aged child (enrolled in grades kindergarten through twelfth grade) proving a sample size of N = 589 households. My findings demonstrate that significant variation by race and class exist in families perceptions of school quality, in specific school characteristics they report represent the most important indicator of school quality, in the number of school choice options families consider during the process of school choice decision making, in specific factors families report as most important for school choice decisions, and finally in the actual school choices families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds make for their children education. Research about how families choose schools and how this decision making process differs by race and socioeconomic status can serve to inform discussions about increasing the amount of public choice schools such as magnets, charters, non-neighborhood public school transfer programs. This research has the potential to assist policy-makers in determining whether expanding such choice options may result in either an increase or a decrease in the ability of racial minorities and those with fewer financial means to attend quality schools. This research may also help determine whether current levels of school segregation along racial and class lines will improve or worsen as families ability to choose schools for their children expands. In Chapter 5 of my study, the unit of analysis for my sample size changes from families (N = 589) to the total number of school choices those 589 families made for their children, resulting in a sample size of N = 655 choices used only in Chapter 5. / Sociology

This study examines the role of parental cultural capital as it pertains to whether a student attends a chosen school and whether the quality of the school a student attends is a function of cultural capital. Three theory-based factors representing cultural capital and three factors that represent facets of school quality were created using principal components analysis. Logistic regression was used to determine that cultural capital does play a role in whether a student attends a chosen school. In fact, one aspect of cultural capital, institutional engagement, is the strongest predictor of whether a student attends a chosen school. Linear regression models shed light on the role that different forms of cultural capital and choosing may play in the quality of school that the student attends. While the results are complex, I am able to conclude that cultural capital and choosing do play a role in the quality of school that a student attends, but community and school district characteristics, as well as parental socioeconomic status may play a stronger role. Models control for student and school district characteristics and school clustering effects. Suggestions for future research and implications for policy are discussed. / Urban Education

This dissertation examines the relationship between school choice and race. I examine whether the racial composition of schools influences choices and whether choices of private and public choice schools lead to greater segregation and stratification in neighborhood schools. I improve on existing research by adopting the theoretical framework used in neighborhood preferences literature to distinguish between race and race-associated reasons as motivations for avoiding racially integrating schools. This study utilizes geocoded data from the Philadelphia Area Study (PAS) and elementary school catchment maps to examine families' preferences and behaviors in the context of the actual conditions of their assigned schools. Catchment maps are integrated with Census data to determine whether choice schools have a role in white flight and segregation and stratification in neighborhood schools. The findings suggest that families are most likely to avoid neighborhood schools with high proportions of racial minorities. However, attitudes regarding racial climates are more consistent predictors of preferences than the actual racial composition of local schools. Highly segregated neighborhood schools satisfy families who desire racially homogeneous school climates, as do private schools. Families who seek diverse environments are more likely to look to charter and magnet schools. The white flight analysis shows that whites are more likely to leave schools that have modest proportions of black students, and less likely to leave schools that are already integrated. These results suggest that whites react especially strongly to schools with low levels of integration, and those who remain in the few racially balanced schools do so out of a preference for diversity or because they do not have the resources to leave. Public choice schools spur white flight in urban areas, but actually reduce flight in suburban schools. Finally, I find that choice schools do not uniformly affect the degree to which racial groups are spatially segregated from whites, and they also do not uniformly affect the degree to which racial groups attend more or less disadvantaged schools than whites. This suggests that segregation and stratification are two distinct aspects of racial inequality and should be considered separately when evaluating the effectiveness of choice programs. / Sociology

School choice is an intriguing issue, getting to the very heart, of the American ideals of freedom, self-direction, equity, and diversity. While school choice is touted by some as a solution to the problems of American education, it is questioned more critically or even cynically by others. What cannot be denied is the fact that school choice exists on an increasingly widespread basis in America. The purposes of this study were to provide an up-to-date review of the status of the school choice movement on the national level, to identify key issues of the movement, and to describe choice options and programs. Having a description of its nature will offer assistance to those decision makers such as school boards, superintendents, administrators, and teachers, who will need to sort the rhetoric from the truth in analyzing the role of school choice in shaping schools in their communities. School choice is replete with contradictory and often unanswered questions. A review of the literature on school choice has revealed a range of issues: school choice as a reform movement, as a diversionary tactic to use public funds for private education, as a solution to integration, as a guise for increased segregation and elitism, as a basic parental right, or as a detriment to the greater needs of a society, among others. One of the strongest observations to be made as a result of this review of school choice is that it is an issue for which the evidence is inconclusive. Another important observation is that school choice has survived head-on attacks on the pclitical battlefields from the White House to state capitols to school board meeting rooms. It has woven itself into the school restructuring movement, and new options such as charter schools continue to emerge in the school choice movement. It is a significant educational issue for the future. / Ed. D.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Thesis advisor: Joseph M. O'Keefe / This mixed methods sequential explanatory designed study applied the economic theory of marketplace competition as a way to frame superintendents' perceptions of the characteristics of students and parents seeking charter schools. Although studies on charter schools are abundant, there is limited literature on this particular aspect of market competition between traditional districts and charter schools. Through surveys and interviews with superintendents across Massachusetts, this study found that most of the superintendents reported a perception that charter schools "cream-skim" higher achieving students and under-serve or "crop" high needs or more costly students - particularly special education and English language learner students. Additionally, superintendents generally perceive that parents were most likely to choose a charter school because of a perception that it was a more elite option and that parents making those choices were more likely to have been engaged in a child's educational life. Many superintendents reported a strong pressure to find ways to retain high-achieving students while expressing resentment that charter schools under-serve high needs students. In three small urban districts, however, superintendents described charter schools that enroll high-needs students proportional to or exceeding the district's student population, filled a gap or met an unmet need, or provided a specialization from which the district could learn. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.