chapter 4: More Than What Money Can Buy: Students’ Experiences with Race and Resource Allocation at a Well Resourced High School

As parents decide to move their families to new neighborhoods, they are often faced with a multitude of tough questions. Is our new home in a safe place? Will we like our new neighbors? Where is the closest grocery store? While these are certainly important and pressing issues, one of the most consistent and crucial questions posed by many families as they choose a new home is “How are the schools?” Many parents spend hours worrying about what the schools in their respective neighborhoods offer in terms of resources. With studies showing school resources such as teacher education, per-student expenditures, and implementation of a rigorous college preparatory curriculum are all linked to various measures of student success (Card & Krueger, 1996; Greenwald, Hedges, & Laine, 1996; Rivkin, 2000), it is hard to critique parents who focus on gaining access to the most well-resourced elementary and secondary schools for their children.