The Scarcity Loop: How School Choice Reshapes the Rationing of Public Education
Autor Jennifer L. Jenningsen Limba Engleză Paperback – 17 sep 2026 – vârsta ani
Champions of school choice, which allows families to enroll students in schools outside of their zoned residential school, argue that it levels the educational playing field. By loosening the central tether in American public schooling--the link between where children live and where they go to school--lower-income students with poorly funded "bad" neighborhood schools have a chance to attend more well-resourced "good" schools. But does a school choice system really live up to these claims? In The Scarcity Loop, sociologist Jennifer L. Jennings explores how families and schools navigate choice in New York City and whether it delivers on the promise of equality in educational opportunity.
Jennings argues that where there are more students than seats in good schools, it is impossible to supply a quality education for all students. Drawing on archival research, over 450 interviews, and participant observation, Jennings shows that school choice does not eliminate this scarcity, instead, it reshapes how public education is rationed. It creates a dual rationing system, in which families compete for scarce seats and schools compete for students. Students' selections are entered into an algorithm that purportedly fairly matches students to schools. But, in order to maintain their schools' reputations, principals strategically filter student admissions by having restrictive geographic priorities, academic screens, or admissions activities that need to be completed. While, in principle, choosing a safe and well-resourced school is straightforward, accessing one can remain out of reach for families without time, transit, language access, or institutional support.
Jennings contends that under a school choice system the labor of securing educational opportunity shifts from school districts to families. School districts are no longer seen as responsible for ensuring all schools can provide a quality education. Rather, school districts offload that responsibility onto families who must now navigate complex systems of admission criteria, applications, exams, school fairs, and open houses to ensure their student chooses and is accepted to a good school. Students must make school choices while navigating caregiving responsibilities, safety concerns, and transportation limitations. What may look like a poor school choice is often the byproduct of these constraints. Under the guise of choice, however, attending a lower quality school becomes an individual or family failure as opposed to an institutional one. Jennings acknowledges that raising the quality of all schools takes time, however, she asserts this must be a long-term goal for public school districts.
The Scarcity Loop skillfully shows the consequences of scarcity in public education on schools and families, and reveals how scarcity reproduces itself, even when reforms are sincere.
JENNIFER L. JENNINGS is the Class of 1988 Professor in Domestic Policy and Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University
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Specificații
ISBN-10: 0871545292
Pagini: 276
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.51 kg
Editura: Russell Sage Foundation
Colecția Russell Sage Foundation
Recenzii
—JON VALANT, director, Brown Center on Education Policy, and senior fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
“Jennings provides a definitive answer to one of the most vital policy questions of our time: What to do when there aren’t enough good schools? School choice is not the answer or a golden ticket to a good education. Encompassing in breadth and penetrating in depth, this is a ground-up view of the nation’s largest school choice system as it is experienced by the students, parents, counselors, teachers, and principals who inhabit it. The Scarcity Loop should be required reading for educational researchers, practitioners, and educators, and anyone who cares about fairness in our schools.”
—KATHRYN J. EDIN, William Church Osborn Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University
“How do families and students select schools? Cutting through the political noise around the subject, Jennings has produced our first sophisticated, historically grounded account of the ways school choice actually happens in urban America. In the guise of enhancing opportunities, it reinforces disparities. And it defers the hard conversations we need about who gets access to quality education, and why. Anyone who wants to understand inequality in our schools—or in our country— will have to read this bold and incisive book.”
—JONATHAN ZIMMERMAN, Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor in Education and professor of history of education, University of Pennsylvania
Descriere
Jennings begins with the admissions process itself. New York City asks every eighth grader to choose from hundreds of options. On paper, the system offers extraordinary possibility. But that possibility still has to be converted into a seat. Someone has to learn the rules, compare schools, manage deadlines, make trips, and decide how much risk a thirteen-year-old can bear. Jennings calls this the work of getting in and shows that the capacity to do that work is not evenly distributed. Some families enter choice systems with the fluency and flexibility to turn options into opportunity. Others confront it with fewer supports and far less room for error. Some teenagers shoulder decisions with little adult help. Counselors translate complicated rules under impossible constraints. Principals are not passive actors. Jennings shows how they recruit and adapt as they try to build schools families will choose while managing demand and reputation.
Jennings contends that reforms meant to expand access can reorganize the very competition they aim to resolve. As one barrier recedes, another becomes more consequential. Residence matters less, but advantage does not disappear; it travels through information, timing, and familiarity with the rules. Inequality persists not because nothing changes, but because advantage finds new points of entry as reforms change rules. As the work of securing opportunity shifts, so do understandings of inequality. Unequal outcomes can come to look less like consequences of how educational opportunities are organized and more like reflections of how families navigate the system.
Drawing on more than 450 interviews, participant observation, administrative data, and archival research, The Scarcity Loop follows students, parents, counselors, and principals as they navigate school choice at scale. Jennings traces who must do the work of making choice real, clarifying what is at stake when public education becomes something families must know how to secure.
The Scarcity Loop skillfully shows the consequences of scarcity in public education on schools and families, and reveals how scarcity reproduces itself, even when reforms are sincere.
JENNIFER L. JENNINGS is the Class of 1988 Professor in Domestic Policy and Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University