Buying Homes, Buying Schools: School Choice and the Social Construction of School Quality

In this article, Jennifer Jellison Holme explores how parents who can afford to buy homes in areas known “for the schools ” approach school choice in an effort to illumi-nate how the “unofficial ” choice market works. Using qualitative methods, Holme finds that the beliefs that inform the choices of such parents are mediated by status ideologies that emphasize race and class. She concludes that school choice policies alone will not level the playing field for lower-status parents, as choice advocates of-ten suggest. Suzanne Holland and I were scheduled to meet on a warm summer morning at a Starbucks coffee shop located in a shopping center near her suburban home.1 I arrived early, and waited at a patio table shaded by a large green umbrella before Suzanne, a tall blond White woman in her early forties, pulled up in her sport utility vehicle. I introduced myself, and after we got our coffees we sat down to talk about why Suzanne had moved to the commu-nity of Rancho Vista, and what role schools had played in that decision. Before she and her husband moved to Rancho Vista, Suzanne informed