What matters: a critical analysis of how parents in low-performing, low-income schools define school quality relative to school performance frameworks

Contemporary American school reform efforts require increased levels of accountability, with a focus placed on student performance on high-stakes accountability measures (HSAM). The data from these measures are reported in school performance frameworks (SPF) in the United States, in which one function is to allow parents to choose schools for their children. The body of research has shown that most parents do not exercise their option to choose new schools based on the information provided in SPF. In California, the SPF proposed for some districts includes the significant use of other data sources to describe both the academic domain and social-emotional domain of a school's overall performance. A review of the literature includes a focus on the practical impact of neoliberal educational reform policies and the pragmatics of school choice opportunities, as well as the practical and theoretical analysis of HSAM through the lenses of critical race theory, social reproduction theory, and theories of pedagogic control. This research study presents the practical and theoretical implications of the information contained in SPF and the ways that parents at low-income schools use this information. Using critical ethnography to conduct a single-instrumental case study, this study aims to answer the question of how parents of students enrolled in low-performing and low-income schools perceive and define the quality of their children's schools based on the information sources that are available to them. Additionally, this study addresses the following research sub-questions: • Which factors contained in the SPF, relative to each other, are of greater importance to these parents? • What factors that are of relevance to these parents are missing from the California Office for the Reform of Education (CORE) SPF? • What factors influence these parents' perceptions of their ability to choose schools for their children based on information presented in SPF?