School Satisfaction Among Low-Income Urban Parents

Abstract

We examine the views of low-income urban parents toward their neighborhood school. Policymakers must understand the attitudes of these individuals, particularly because they represent some of the most vulnerable groups in our education system. As national education policies have made it easier for parents to choose schools, attention has increasingly focused on parental satisfaction and its predictors. Using a unique survey of low-income urban residents in 10 cities, combined with test score and graduation data, we find that these parents express favorable attitudes toward their neighborhood schools, with weak but statistically significant connections to objective ratings of school performance.

Keywords

parent satisfaction low-income parents urban education neighborhood school

It is well established in the education literature that parents play an integral role in the academic success of their children (Amatea, Cholewa, & Mixon, 2012; Desimone, Finn-Stevenson, & Henrich, 2000; Henderson & Mapp, 2002; Jeynes, 2014). Collaboration between administrators, teachers, parents, and policymakers regarding the education of children is the most promising method of generating positive educational outcomes (Boutte & Johnson, 2014). Increasingly, attention to the attitudes of parents on a range of education policy issues has received media and academic attention, including attitudes about charter schools, magnet schools, school vouchers, standardized testing trends, and other education reforms. Yet, much of this information reflects aggregated policy positions of parents without considering the potentially unique views of low-income, inner-city parents. These parents are disproportionately families of color. In this article, we explore a unique survey of low-income urban residents in 10 cities, combined with data on test scores and graduation rates, for connections between school performance and support for neighborhood schools. Using these data, our study examines factors that predict low-income, urban parents’ satisfaction with their child’s school. We hypothesize that the unique intersectional identities of these parents mean that their levels of satisfaction with neighborhood schools will reflect not just school performance, but also local context such as minority city leadership and the presence of alternative school choices.

Our research contributes to the understanding of low-income urban parents’ attitudes about their neighborhood schools. This is of particular importance given the growing gap between wealthy and impoverished schools (Reardon, 2011). Understanding the attitudes of low-income urban parents presents an opportunity to structure reform that respects these opinions and incorporates them as solutions are pursued. The collaboration between administrators, teachers, parents, and policymakers about education must not be a phenomenon limited to middle and upper class students; education policies must also reflect the needs and preferences of urban and working class families whose children most need this support to succeed (Ullucci & Howard, 2015).

In this article, we hypothesize that low-income urban parents will choose loyalty to neighborhood schools even when ostensibly objective measures of performance suggest that those neighborhood schools are poor performers. Data come from face-to-face interviews in 10 cities, supplemented with school outcome data. Our analysis tests the degree to which parental satisfaction is related to school performance. In addition, we examine the effect of a variety of other likely predictors of low-income urban parent satisfaction with neighborhood schools, including the availability of charter and magnet schools, minority city leadership, homeownership, and neighborhood satisfaction. To preview our results, we find that low-income urban parents in these 10 neighborhoods were likely to express favorable attitudes toward their neighborhood public schools, with only weak connections to objective ratings of school performance or the presence of school choice, and stronger connections to the direction in which school performance is moving (improving over time or not).

Urban districts generally perform more poorly as measured by quantitative student outcomes relative to non-urban districts. Understanding the opinions of low-income parents of urban school districts is important because the children of these parents are frequently denied access to high-performing schools, despite recent increases in the availability of charter and magnet school options (Berends, 2014; Silverman, 2012). As discussed more fully below, these families are enormously dependent on public education for the future of their children. Survey researchers generally assume that a national study of Americans can effectively represent all Americans, but standpoint scholars argue that opinions are shaped by group members’ location in the social and economic order. Intersectionality scholars add that different groups with shared attributes do not necessarily share policy beliefs. In other words, groups cannot be defined by single attributes because other social and political factors shape their lives (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1995; Hancock, 2007). The opinions of low-income urban parents are the product of having low-income and an urban residency. National surveys that include respondents from both urban and non-urban areas, or that focus on urban areas but include individuals from a variety of income groups, cannot adequately represent the opinions of low-income urban parents.

An Era of School Choice

The past two decades have witnessed exponential growth in the number of charter and magnet schools in the United States, from just two in 1991 to almost 3,000 by 2004 (enrolling approximately 750,000 students) and 5,600 by 2011 (serving about 1.8 million students).¹ This growth is due in part to implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2001. Proposed by President George W. Bush, NCLB allowed parents increased school accountability and indirectly encouraged the growth of charter schools as a method of offering families more choices and improving public school performance. NCLB focused on school performance as measured by annual test scores, underscoring the assumption that the dominant (if not only) factor that should be considered when evaluating schools is the degree to which students are meeting performance goals in academic subjects such as math and English. Building on NCLB, President Barack Obama’s 2009 Race to the Top initiative encouraged innovation in K-12 education through a variety of means including the creation of new charter schools. Scholarly attention to the determinants of parental satisfaction with neighborhood schools has increased during this same period, reflecting the need for schools to keep parents happy or risk their taking advantage of alternative public school options, a possibility made easier due in part to federal education policy (Bejou, 2012).

The concept of school choice follows the logic of Milton Friedman (1962), who argued in Capitalism and Freedom for introducing a market mechanism into public education, allowing parents to choose schools as easily as consumers choose products, and in particular to more easily remove their children from low-performing schools. However, as Albert Hirschman (1970) points out in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, parents may realize that removing their children from public school “may thereby contribute to a further deterioration of public education” (p. 100). In this sense, removing children, or using the exit option, may be less appealing. Motivated by broader reasons such as the public good and the overall quality of public education in their community, parents may instead choose “loyalty” and keep their children in a low-performing neighborhood school. Choosing loyalty also allows parents to exercise the “voice” option whereby they advocate for school improvement and agitate for change.

Previous Scholarship on School Satisfaction

Consumers (or parents) who choose “exit” are those who quit the organization or switch to a competitor; their behavior most closely resembles the rational consumer behavior theorized by economists. However, there are many reasons to expect low-income inner-city residents to be supportive of neighborhood schools despite objective measures of poor performance. First, low-income, inner-city residents represent those who are often unable to relocate because of their limited incomes, dependence on family networks, and spatial barriers to economic and social mobility. In other words, among the traditional options of exit, voice, or loyalty, the exit option is fairly inaccessible. Poor children are often some of the most mobile students due to unstable housing situations (Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2004; Rhodes & DeLuca, 2014; Tobin, 2014). However, their mobility generally means that they move from one underperforming school to another (Schwartz & Stiefel, 2014).

Second, low-income urban parents often identify with teachers working in the current system. Marion Orr (1999) identifies public schools as employment regimes and the primary employer of the Black middle class. As Henig, Hula, Orr, and Pedescleaux (1999) note, this means that teachers and principals in these schools “constitute one of the few examples of success” (p. 154) that students and parents know. This can increase the allegiance of low-income minority residents toward their neighborhood schoolteachers, even when the schools themselves are failing.

Third, political trust is often low in inner-city communities (Van Ryzin, Muzzio, & Immerwahr, 2004), potentially causing greater pessimism about the local government’s willingness or ability to improve urban schools. Henig et al. argue that the history of discrimination in many urban areas reduces trust among communities of color toward White civic and political leaders. This mistrust of the government reduces the feasibility of urban school reform coalitions (Henig et al., 1999).

Fourth, low-income urban parents may be especially skeptical of the new school reform agenda, particularly when school closures are emphasized. This can result in shuffling of students from one failing school to another, rather than leading to better educational outcomes. It is not an overall resistance to change that low-income urban residents espouse, but a reallocation of resources to bolster their neighborhood schools. African Americans favor an expansion of existing educational services: They are significantly more likely than Whites to express support for increasing funding for schools and for raising teachers’ salaries (Tate, 2010; West, Henderson, & Peterson, 2014).

Previous scholarship has found that homeowners rate their neighborhoods more highly than do renters, a finding attributed to their greater levels of economic investment in the neighborhood. Homeowners may be inclined to rate their neighborhood schools favorably to protect their equity. This is true for research examining the general population, representing mainly middle- and upper-income households (Herbert & Belsky, 2006; Rohe & Basolo, 1997) as well as for low- and moderate-income households (Grinstein-Weiss et al., 2011). Looking at 24 metropolitan areas over four time periods (1987-1999), Hipp (2009) finds that homeownership has “a particularly strong effect” on reported neighborhood satisfaction. A recent report from the Brookings Institute notes that home values vary considerably depending on how local schools are rated (Rothwell, 2012). Consistent with this scholarship, we hypothesize below that homeowners will rate their schools more highly than will renters.

Predictors of Low-Income Parental Attitudes

Previous research on parental satisfaction has found that parents value a number of factors quite separate from academic performance. Tuck (1995), focusing on the D.C. public schools, identified five factors that determined parental satisfaction: quality of staff, school climate, academic program, social development and extracurricular activities, and parent involvement. In a study of satisfaction with New York City public schools, Cooper and Letts (2002) found the most important predictor to be perceptions of a safe school and positive climate. Rhodes and DeLuca (2014) argue that low-income parents also value factors such as school safety, student behavior, and the disciplinary practices of school administrators. B. A. Friedman, Bobrowski, and Geraci (2006) use a large national survey of parents to determine factors important to parent satisfaction with their children’s schools and whether or not such factors differ across ethnoracial groups. Their national sample included 27,605 parents in 121 schools in 27 school districts, with significant numbers of Anglo (69.9%), Latino (14.7%), African American (11.5%), and Asian American (3.9%) respondents. Across all ethnoracial groups, parent satisfaction was most strongly linked to perceptions of their children’s safety at school. Also important was the value that parents saw in the school budget.

We build on this existing scholarship with data from a unique multi-city survey conducted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Making Connections Survey (MCS). Unlike data studied by Tuck (1995) or Cooper and Letts (2002), the MCS includes responses from a variety of geographic locations rather than from a single urban setting, and is based on face-to-face interviews. The work of B. A. Friedman et al. (2006) was based on a mail-based survey with a 30% response rate; in contrast, the MCS response rate is more than 69%. Further details about the MCS are described below.

Policymakers need to know what drives parental opinions to be responsive to public demands to improve education. Especially pressing is the question of how to improve urban schools, the failings of which were highlighted in Jonathan Kozol’s (1991) bestselling Savage Inequalities and in a 1996 report from the National Center for Education Statistics.² As these popular and official documents attest, low-income urban schools face huge challenges, and those challenges are in turn reflected in objective measures of student (and school) performance. What is less well understood is how the parents of children in low-performing schools, in low-income urban communities, view their neighborhood schools. In addition, policymakers lack information on the attitudes of these parents as they relate to recent attempts to shift students out of underperforming neighborhood schools and into charter or magnet schools.

Relevant large-scale public opinion studies are rare. In a 2001 Gallup poll, only 12% of Blacks and 7% of Whites rated the U.S. public education system “excellent.” Pluralities of Blacks (32%) and Whites (39%) rated the U.S. school system as “only fair.” Majorities of both groups felt that testing would improve schools “a great deal” or a “fair amount.” Approximately 49.5% of Blacks and 40.5% of Whites felt that testing was not an accurate way of measuring learning for grade advancement. Blacks were significantly more likely than Whites and other-race Americans to advocate increased funding for public schools and higher salaries for teachers.

Similar findings emerge from a more recent study of public opinion, conducted from 2007 to 2013. Here, the racial opinion gap is small and ranges from 2% to 9% on the issue of annual testing requirements, tests for promotion, vouchers, and charters (West et al., 2014). Blacks and Latinos were more likely than Whites to favor school choice. Still, Black and White respondents differ considerably in their attitudes toward teachers, teachers unions, and spending on public education. For example, Black respondents were significantly more likely than White respondents to favor increased spending on public schools. They were also more likely to favor tenure for teachers.

Another predictor of parental satisfaction may be local (mayoral) political leadership. Many big-city mayors started looking for a larger role in urban education policy in the 1990s (Chambers, 2006; Henig & Rich, 2004; Viteritti, 2009; Wong, Shen, Anagnostopoulos, & Rutledge, 2007). In their study of ethnic-led cities, Henig, Holyoke, Brown, and Lacireno-Pauqet (2007) found that ethnic leaders and citizens were reluctant to criticize educational leaders. In a similar vein, it may be the transition into Black- and minority-led regimes that explains high levels of satisfaction with urban school systems today. In a 1996 national survey of African Americans, Blacks who rated Jesse Jackson very favorably were significantly more likely to support fixing Black neighborhood schools over busing students to other schools (Tate, 2010). In interviews with elected officials, community activists, and teachers, researchers find a link between increasing diversification of educational leadership and satisfaction with the school system in Chicago and Cleveland (Chambers, 2006) and citizen participation programs (Berry, Portney, & Thomson, 1993). Consistent with this scholarship, we hypothesize below that residents of cities led by Black or Latino mayors will rate their schools more highly than will residents of cities led by White mayors.

In sum, it is not clear how low-income urban parents evaluate their local schools. It may be that low-income urban parents support efforts to raise test scores and graduation rates and will be critical of low-performing schools. These parents may also strongly favor new efforts to increase the number of charters and magnet schools. Inner-city parents may also have greater political trust than suggested by media reports because of the new diversity within school administrations as well as the growing political empowerment of minority groups in American cities. Some research shows that parents and activists felt better about Chicago and Cleveland’s school systems because of increases in minority representation on the school board (Chambers, 2006), and political efficacy among minorities has increased in minority-led cities (Bobo & Gilliam, 1990). However, low-income urban parents may support their schools even if these schools are not performing well. Hastings and Weinstein (2008) found that low-income Black parents chose lower-performing schools when they also had strong percentages of African American students. In sum, low-income urban parents take into consideration factors other than school performance when choosing between exit, voice, and loyalty, and often focus on school characteristics other than academic success when evaluating local schools.

Hypotheses

Our primary research question is whether parental satisfaction among low-income urban parents is dependent on objective measures of school performance such as graduation rates and test scores. We also expect satisfaction to be influenced by the presence of charter and magnet schools, which give parents increased choice and thus stronger feelings of control over the education of their children. These are the two main questions explored in this article. We also explored three secondary hypotheses, guided by previous scholarship on parental satisfaction: That parents who were homeowners, who lived in cities led by minority mayors, or who liked their neighborhoods would be more satisfied than renters, parents living in cities led by White non-Hispanic (Anglo) mayors, or individuals less satisfied with their neighborhoods. Thus, our five hypotheses are as follows:

Hypothesis 1: Parents from low-income urban communities with stronger objective measures of school performance and improvement (i.e., graduation rates and test scores) will report higher levels of satisfaction with their child’s school.

Hypothesis 2: Parents from communities with more school choice (i.e., more magnet and charter schools) will report higher levels of satisfaction with their child’s school.

Hypothesis 3: Parents in cities with racial and ethnic minority mayors will have higher evaluations of their child’s schools than will parents with White, non-Hispanic mayors.

Hypothesis 4: Parents from low-income communities who are homeowners will rate their child’s schools highly than will renters.

Hypothesis 5: Parents from low-income communities who are more satisfied with their neighborhood will rate their child’s schools more highly than will parents who are less satisfied with their neighborhood.

Data to test Hypotheses 1 to 3 were compiled by the authors from primary sources (see Table 2); data on homeownership and neighborhood satisfaction are included in the MCS database.

As noted in Hypothesis 1, we expected a positive correlation between parental satisfaction with schools and measures of graduation and test scores. In Hypothesis 2, we note that we expected satisfaction to reflect the presence of choice, operationalized as the number of charter and magnet schools in the city. Hypothesis 3 notes the importance of local political leadership. In 2005-2007, eight of the Making Connections cities had White mayors; Hartford had a Latino mayor; Oakland elected a Black mayor (Ron Dellums) in 2006. Hypothesis 4 tests the hypothesis that homeownership—a measure of one’s commitment to and economic stake in a neighborhood—predicts parental satisfaction. Finally, Hypothesis 5 tests the hypothesis that satisfaction with the neighborhood predicts satisfaction with neighborhood schools. This is operationalized with survey questions that asked whether the respondent believes that his or hers is a close-knit neighborhood, and whether the respondent believes that his or hers is a good neighborhood in which to raise children.

Testing an Intersectionality Theory for Low-Income Urban Residents

Standpoint theory contends that opinion is shared based on people’s social and economic position; that what one knows is affected by where one stands (one’s subject position) in society (Appelrouth & Edles, 2010). Thus, opinion is not simply ideologically derived, but rather, social group position represents a critical determinant of public opinion. This theory was developed further by feminist scholars, who argued that beliefs and behaviors are shaped by social position, as well as by intersectional systems of society including socioeconomic class, gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1995).

Even as intersectionality theory has won greater intellectual acceptability, its application in political science research, our field of study, remains limited. Ange-Marie Hancock (2007) writes that although political scientists focus on how race, ethnicity, and gender shape politics, they have only recently begun to examine how interrelated social categories shape behavior and institutions (e.g., Fraga, Lopez, Martinez-Ebers, & Ramirez, 2006; Hardy-Fanta, Lien, Pinderhughes, & Sierra, 2006; Orey, Orey, Smooth, Adams, & Harris-Clark, 2006). Data, Hancock contends, must be collected in a new way such that information on unitary social groups is eschewed for data on multiple, interconnected, or socially overlapping groups. She posits that it is not enough to recognize new intersectional groups and collect data about them, but researchers must begin to theorize about such groups. Theory must elucidate how these multiple categories create an “integrated terrain” for the set of people belonging to these categories.

Low-income urban Americans embody the complex characteristics discussed by intersectionality scholars. They are poor, usually members of communities of color, and live in urban (and likely high-crime) areas; these overlapping identities give them a unique perspective on the role of and importance of public education. Howard and Navarro (2016) note, “marginalized groups, be they African American, Asian American, Native American, Latino/a, the poor, or women, have sought education as a pathway for economic mobility, economic empowerment, political voice, and social transformation” (p. 2). Yet, as Conchas and Vigil (2012) note, intersections of race, class, and gender tend to generate negative outcomes for youth of color in public schools, particularly for young men. Parents in these neighborhoods are more likely than others to depend on public education as a pathway to success for their children, and thus will have unique attitudes about their neighborhood schools.

We turn now to a more detailed description of the unique data set we use to investigate our hypotheses, the MCS.

The Making Connections Survey Data

Data for our analysis are based on the MCS, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The survey consists of three waves. In Phase I, conducted in 1999, the survey collected data from low-income neighborhoods in 22 cities around the country. These results were used to determine which neighborhoods should be included in the second phase of the project. In Phase 2, conducted between 2005 and 2007, face-to-face interviews were conducted with an equal probability-selected sample of individuals from households in low-income neighborhoods in targeted areas in 10 cities: Denver, Colorado; Des Moines, Iowa; Hartford, Connecticut; Indianapolis, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Oakland, California; Providence, Rhode Island; San Antonio, Texas; and White Center, Washington. Data were collected jointly by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago and the Urban Institute. Interviews were conducted on site in residents’ homes, in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Cantonese, and Hmong as relevant to each site. Households in each target area had an equal probability of being sampled due to use of a sampling design based on NORC’s list-assisted probability sampling procedures (see Iannichione, Staab, & Redden, 2003; O’Muircheartaigh, Eckman, & Weiss, 2002). In households without children, an adult respondent was chosen at random. In households with children, one child in the household was selected at random, and an interview was sought with the parent or guardian most knowledgeable about that child. Interviews took an average of 45 minutes and covered a variety of topics, including (a) neighborhood connections; (b) neighborhood actions, services, and amenities; (c) organizations and volunteerism; (d) family hardship; (e) the focus child; (f) income and assets; and (g) demographics.

Overall, 69% of targeted individuals completed the interview, representing 7,498 households. Here, due to our interest in education and satisfaction with children’s neighborhood schools, we restrict our attention to those households containing school-aged children (defined as age 7-17), about one quarter of the overall Phase II sample (N = 2,486), and corresponding to the questionnaires used in the MCS, which asked different sets of questions for parents of children aged 0 to 6 and those aged 7 to 17. Specifically, our dependent variable is the survey item about satisfaction with the ages 7 to 17 child’s school. Table 1 describes the respondents included in this study.

Table 1.

Description of Making Connections Survey Respondents, by City (Unweighted).

Target area	Low income (<US$30k; %)	Receiving TANF or welfare (%)	Foreign-born (%)	Non-Latino White (Anglo; %)	Black (%)	Latino (%)	Asian (%)	Renters (%)
Denver	85.25	36.74	36.41	11.98	19.82	61.29	4.61	74.65
Des Moines	65.76	35.41	26.07	40.86	31.13	19.46	5.06	38.52
Hartford	82.64	46.42	49.43	0	53.58	46.04	0.38	81.89
Indianapolis	76.55	41.59	7.52	31.86	59.29	7.08	0.44	59.73
Louisville	84.86	33.51	2.70	11.89	84.86	1.62	1.08	72.43
Milwaukee	83.87	49.17	15.81	5.48	74.84	4.84	13.23	66.13
Oakland	79.56	24.43	70.67	4.89	18.67	35.11	38.22	78.67
Providence	74.56	46.64	68.55	4.59	30.74	60.78	6.36	69.26
San Antonio	79.41	44.44	23.20	3.27	0.33	96.41	0	43.79
White Center	48.11	31.13	47.17	39.62	10.85	22.64	20.28	45.75
ALL	76.35	39.87	35.08	14.48	37.85	37.53	8.65	62.59

Note. TANF = Temporary assistance for needy families.

Source. Making Connections Survey, Wave 2.

We collected additional data about city school systems for each of the 10 target cities, including graduation rates, eighth-grade proficiency rates in math and English, and the numbers of magnet and charter schools in the district (see Table 2). Although there are important differences between charter and magnet schools, in only one of the target cities were both options available to parents, as shown in Table 2.³ To simplify, we combine counts of both types of alternative schools to indicate the availability of other options to local parents. Data were collected for both 2005 and 2007, aligning with the period during which the Making Connections data were being collected. In general, graduation rates are higher than test score proficiency rates, reflecting school district incentives to see students graduate. Overall, graduation rates in urban districts are low compared with their suburban neighbors. For example, the Hartford schools earned a reputation as one of the lowest district graduation rates in the country (41% in 2005 and 40% in 2007). For the cities in this study, only three had graduation rates consistently higher than 70%. State test scores are generally a more objective source of school district data, especially because they allow observers to compare the scores in a district with state norms. In general, and in all of the cities examined here, urban districts have lower scores in math and English than aggregated state scores, evidence that urban schools continue to lag behind more affluent school systems.

Table 2.

Graduation Rates, English and Math Proficiency Rates, and Number of Charter and Magnet Schools, by City, 2005-2007.

	Graduation rate, 2005 (%)	Graduation rate, 2007 (%)	Math (% proficient), 2005	Math (% proficient), 2007	English (% proficient), 2005	English (% proficient), 2007	Charter schools, 2005	Magnet schools, 2005	Charter schools, 2007	Magnet schools, 2007
Denver	60	63	22	23	41	38	18	0	26	0
Des Moines	84	74	61	55	59	54	0	1	0	1
Hartford	41	40	22	22	32	28	1	18	1	20
Indianapolis	51	46	43	38	45	37	0	27	0	23
Louisville	74	72	29	26	54	57	0	27	0	28
Milwaukee	43	45	36	38	56	61	35	0	28	0
Oakland	53	68	27	23	25	24	57	0	77	0
Providence	77	58	62	66	70	73	4	0	4	0
San Antonio	76	66	49	58	61	82	6	0	13	0
White Center	74	70	34	38	63	57	0	0	0	0

Source. Complied by the authors by compiling data on each school system. Data were collected from the school districts themselves, or the state departments of education. Proficiency rates are for eighth grade except for Louisville English proficiency rates, which reflect seventh-grade exams.

Graduation rates in 2005 for these districts ranged from a low of 41% (Hartford) to a high of 84% (Des Moines). The percentage of students in eighth grade earning “proficient” scores in math in 2005 ranged from a low of 22 (Denver and Hartford) to a high of 62 (Providence). The percentage of students in eighth grade earning “proficient” scores in English in 2005 ranged from 25 (Oakland) to a high of 70 (Providence). We also constructed variables reflecting changes over time (from 2005 to 2007) in the outcome measures. This includes average graduation rates and math and English scores across the 2 years, as well as the average availability of alternative schools. We expected the change measures might be predictors of parent satisfaction in that parents might be more aware of, or more interested in, whether their child’s school was improving or not, rather than in absolute numbers. In other words, even if their child’s school had a low graduation rate, or had a low proportion of children reaching proficiency in math or English, they might still be satisfied with the school if they saw that things were improving, or less satisfied if they saw things as getting worse.

Parents in these 10 low-income communities, as expected, rated schools highly. Respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with the job the school is doing to educate their children on a scale of very satisfied (5), satisfied (4), neither satisfied nor dissatisfied (3), dissatisfied (2), or very dissatisfied (1). Overall, as shown in Table 3, schools earned an average rating of 4.143 on this 5-point scale, ranging from a low of 3.862 (Hartford) to a high of 4.431 (Des Moines). The standard deviations were tight, averaging 0.961. Few parents claimed to be dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. The F-statistic indicates that these small differences are, nevertheless, statistically significant.

Table 3.

Making Connections Survey Respondents, Average Parental Satisfaction With Child’s School, by City.

City	M parental satisfaction	SD	n
Denver	4.262	0.817	187
Des Moines	4.431	0.738	202
Hartford	3.862	1.222	253
Indianapolis	4.149	1.001	202
Louisville	4.114	0.909	175
Milwaukee	4.323	0.870	291
Oakland	4.035	0.815	198
Providence	3.970	1.097	270
San Antonio	4.255	0.855	275
White Center	4.042	0.970	192
Total	4.143	0.961	2,245

Source. Making Connections Survey, Wave 2.

Analysis and Results

We regress responses to measures of school satisfaction on a set of variables we hypothesize to predict parent attitudes. This includes some MCS items as well as supplemental external information about local school performance and the prevalence of magnet and charter schools in each neighborhood. We tested our hypotheses with a set of two weighted multivariate regressions. Recall that we were interested in whether or not reported satisfaction was related to measures of performance, including graduation rates and proficiency in math and English, as well as the direction in which these measures were moving from 2005 to 2007, the period during which the survey data were collected. We also expected parental satisfaction to be affected by homeownership, the presence of a Black or Latino mayor, the presence of charter and magnet schools, and neighborhood satisfaction.

We use various measures of satisfaction with the neighborhood and involvement in the schools, including measures of the perceived helpfulness of one’s neighbors (helpful), participation in school activities (participate) and after school programs (after), and whether or not the respondent believes that he or she lives in a good neighborhood for raising children (goodhood) or a close-knit neighborhood (close).

Our statistical analysis included a variety of demographic variables, including the ethnoracial identity of respondents, nativity (U.S. vs. foreign-born), age, education, homeownership, gender, and whether or not they were receiving public assistance. Although respondents were asked about their household income, consistent with other public surveys, many individuals declined to respond to this item. In this analysis, we rely on homeownership and receipt of public assistance as proxies for income, to avoid losing a significant number of observations.

We ran four regression models. In each, the dependent variable was reported satisfaction with neighborhood schools, rated from low (1) to high (5). Two models use absolute measures of school performance and the availability of alternative schools in 2007; the other two use variables measuring the change in these numbers from 2005 to 2007. This is designed to test the hypothesis that the direction in which the academic environment is moving (e.g., improved test scores and graduation rates) may be more strongly related to school satisfaction than absolute measures.

As shown in Table 4, school performance measures matter, but what matters to parents is the direction in which these outcome measures are moving rather than their absolute values. Model 1 includes actual measures from 2007 of graduation rates, math and English proficiency, and the number of alternative (charter and magnet) schools available. Here, none of the outcome measures are statistically significant predictors of parent satisfaction. In contrast, Model 2 includes measures of change from 2005 to 2007 for those variables. Here, performance matters. Increased graduation rates and English proficiency predict higher parental satisfaction, whereas decreased choice (measured as the change in the number of charter and magnet schools available) predicts decreased satisfaction. The estimate for changes in math proficiency is not statistically significant. Other statistically significant variables indicate that women are less likely to be satisfied with their child’s school than are men, that satisfaction decreases slightly with the increasing age of the interviewed parent, and that parents with higher levels of education are less satisfied. Model 2 shows a strong negative effect of the presence of a minority mayor. Participation by the child in school activities increases satisfaction, as do perceptions that one lives in a neighborhood that is good for raising children. This finding suggests that improving neighborhood conditions can improve parental satisfaction with the public schools, consistent with education scholarship that concludes that improvements in neighborhood conditions would do much to improve student outcomes in underperforming schools (e.g., Ladd, 2012; Orr & Rogers, 2010; Sampson, 2012; Warren, 2005).

Table 4.

Multivariate Regression Models Predicting Parental Satisfaction With Schools, Making Connections Survey Respondents.

	Model 1: 2007 outcome measures		Model 2: 2005-2007 change in outcome measures
	Coefficient estimate	SE	Coefficient estimate	SE
Asian	−.144	.151	−0.087	.149
Black	0.061	.083	−0.017	.082
Latino	−0.026	.104	0.020	.104
Foreign-born	−0.082	.079	−0.050	.080
Renter	0.074	.063	0.080	.063
Female	−.145*	.063	−.148*	.063
Age	−.006^†	.003	−.005^†	.003
TANF	−0.031	.062	−0.022	.062
Education	−.041**	.016	−.035*	.016
Minority mayor	0.042	.083	−.316**	.115
Graduation rate	.002	.003	.051**	.013
Math proficiency	−.002	.003	−.007	.005
English proficiency	.003	.003	.011**	.004
Charters and magnets	.001	.002	−.028**	.007
Participate	.182**	.061	.185**	.061
After	−.014	.060	−0.012	.060
Close	.040	.029	0.041	.029
Helpful	.019	.032	0.018	.032
Goodhood	.184**	.065	.189**	.064
Constant	3.974**	.261	5.120**	.306
N	2,011		2,011
R ²	.0455		.0528

†

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01 (two-tailed).

That ethnicity, race, and measures of economic class were unrelated to parental attitudes suggests that living in low-income urban communities creates social bonds that transcend other social and economic differences among residents, and supports our contention that these parents have a unique perspective on their neighborhood schools that reflects their intersecting identities. This analysis of low-income urban residents contradicts other studies finding significant social and political cleavages between Blacks, Asians, and Latinos (e.g., Bobo & Johnson, 2000; Gay, 2006; McClain, 1993; Meier & Stewart, 1991). In general, residents of low-income urban communities appear united around education and collectively support the schools their children attend, regardless of their ethnoracial identity. Social conflicts in urban America between these groups may not strongly translate into political or policy disputes regarding public education. Some scholars contend that sentiments concerning school reform are changing among minority groups, and especially among Latinos, who want the selective benefits of charter schools (Clarke, Hero, Sidney, Fraga, & Erlichson, 2006). Further study on this topic is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn about the degree to which low-income urban residents share similar outlooks about neighborhood schooling.

The presence of a minority mayor did not improve respondent satisfaction with their children’s schools, as we had hypothesized. Although minority mayors tend to take clear, more liberal stands on police standards and review (e.g., Browning, Marshall, & Tabb, 1984), education policy is in flux and there may not be a clearly identifiable position that distinguishes minority mayors from White mayors. Because the electoral system influences the education policymaking process, future research should develop more nuanced measures of political context, such as whether the district has an elected school board (Chambers, 2006; Fraga & Frost, 2010; Hero, 1992; Leal, Martinez-Ebers, & Meier, 2004).

Conclusion

School reform, and notably urban school reform, has emerged as an important national issue in multiple recent presidential administrations. Media coverage of its key features such as school closures, ending teacher tenure, and expanding school choice through charters has provided mixed reports concerning the opinions of low-income urban residents. On one hand, urban parents are said to identify with teachers, and generally to oppose the new emphasis on testing, new pay-for-performance rules, and charters (Orr, 1999; West et al., 2014). They are expected to support traditional public schools even if these schools have poor educational records. On the other hand, Black Americans and low-income Americans favor certain types of reform, especially choice (Fuller & Elmore, 1996; Viteritti, Walberg, & Wolf, 2005). We hypothesized that the intersectional identities of parents living in low-income urban communities would generate unique perspectives on their neighborhood schools, based not just on school performance and the presence of school choice, but also on other factors relevant to their overlapping identities.

The results of this study generally provide mixed, yet valuable findings. Urban parents in the 10 low-income urban communities gave very high marks in the surveys to to their neighborhood schools. Schools were very positively rated, 3.8 to 4.4 on a 5-point scale. Parents felt more satisfied with their children’s schools in districts that had high levels of teaching success as measured by English proficiency scores. The low graduation rates that characterize many urban school districts, however, did not negatively affect opinions about schools. Similarly, the number of magnets and charters in the urban districts did not affect opinion. Contrary to our expectations, satisfaction was lower in minority-led versus Anglo-led cities, but there is little variation in this independent variable, and thus, this result should be viewed cautiously. At the same time, all ethnoracial groups in these low-income communities expressed equally high levels of satisfaction with their children’s schools. As predicted by intersectionality theory, their multiple and overlapping identities as members of these low-income urban neighborhoods are more powerful than any single ethnoracial identity.

Overall, the results indicate that low-income parents favor reform, but still value, at unexpectedly high levels, the schools their children attend. Although parents want reform, they would likely oppose any radical push to transform urban public education. They choose loyalty, not exit. Regardless of race, gender, or degree of poverty, low-income urban respondents in these 10 cities reported similar levels of satisfaction with public schools. Residents who had positive things to say about their neighborhoods expressed even higher levels of satisfaction with their schools. These parents support reform goals that might provide better educations for their children, but given the solidly high opinions they have about the schools their children attend, school reformers should proceed, but proceed cautiously.

Urban parents value neighborhood schools even in the face of low performance. Politicians and policymakers seeking to further push for charter and magnet options, or other exit-based solutions to low-performing neighborhood schools, may encounter significant local resistance. Instead, education policies may find greater local support when they focus on loyalty options, working with local teachers and parents to improve and support existing schools without penalizing or closing them.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Stefanie Chambers is Charles A. Dana research associate professor of political science at Trinity College. She is author of Somalis in the Twin Cities and Columbus: Immigrant Incorporation in New Destinations (forthcoming Temple University Press) and Mayors and Schools: Minority Voices and Democratic Tensions in Urban Education (Temple University Press). Her research examines mayoral leadership, urban education, migration and environmental justice.

Melissa R. Michelson is professor of Political Science at Menlo College. She is co-author of Mobilizing Inclusion: Redefining Citizenship through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns (Yale, 2012), and of Living the Dream: New Immigration Policies and the Lives of Undocumented Latino Youth (Paradigm, 2014), and has published extensively in the fields of minority and LGBT politics.

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