Drawing on interviews with more than a hundred parents of elementary school students in New York City, Bailey A. Brown shows how inequality manifests itself as parents and students deal with the uncertainties of the school choice process. By conceptualizing school decision making as labor, she makes visible the often-unseen work that goes into making educational decisions for children.
What inspired you to write Kindergarten Panic?
Bailey A. Brown (BAB): I attended New York City public schools as a child. In the opening for the book, I describe my experience nervously testing for the gifted and talented exam as a four-year-old. After my family moved to Connecticut, my parents often reflected on my short time in New York City schools and how stressed they were about how I would perform on the test. Over the years, I always thought back to how school decisions like these impact parents. I noticed how much uncertainty surrounded school decisions back thenâand I wanted to understand what was underneath that anxiety today. Once I began interviewing families, it became clear that this wasnât just about school choice, but about inequality, gender, race, neighborhood and how much invisible labor parentsâespecially mothersâput into trying to give their kids a fair shot.
How did you decide on the title Kindergarten Panic?
BAB: The term stems from a mother I interviewed for the study. When I first heard her refer to the process as Kinder-Panic, I didnât think much of it. As I continued interviewing parents, I kept coming back to the phrase because it truly represented how families were experiencing this new era of school choice and the increased labor of school decision-making. Parents described feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and like they couldnât afford to make the âwrongâ decision. The pressure to get it right, combined with opaque processes and scarce resources, created a real sense of panicâespecially for families with less advantages. Parents all wanted the best for their kids but were left feeling they could potentially make a wrong decision that would negatively impact their childâs future. I argue that the design and rationale behind school choice intensifies these feelings. When schools are unequal and the burden is on parents to figure it out, the system is structured to reward certain kinds of labor and access. The panic isnât an overreactionâitâs a predictable outcome of a broken system.
You write about school choice as labor, what do you mean by this and what does this look like day-to-day for families?
BAB: I argue that the process of choosing a school requires significant cognitive, emotional, and logistical work. The work is unpaid, largely invisible laborâbut deeply consequential. I also argue that while childrearing has always been work, the added burden of searching for a school has made early parenting more labor intensive. The labor requires parents to research school options, attend tours, decipher school jargon, and manage timelines. It also requires parents to deal with a waiting periodâa time that is very uncertain. The labor also incorporates a problem-solving period following enrollment decisions if a parent is dissatisfied with the school option they have been offered. This labor reproduces inequality because of parentsâ relative advantages and disadvantages.
Day-to-day this also varied for parents. Parents described spending anywhere from 20 to over 100 hours researching, touring, applying, and managing school-related decisions. Some even likened it to a part-time job. These experiences suggest the significant time tax embedded into the system of school choice.
What do you say to the critics who argue that school choice is empowering?
BAB: Economic and market models in favor of school choice have often argued that schools will improve by giving parents the âpower to choose.â Hardly any of the parents I interviewed found the process empowering even if they were satisfied with their child’s school. Many felt that the process was too exhausting and anxiety-inducing to be deemed empowering. Across class, nearly all the parents described the process as challenging and fraught with uncertainty. Even if their child ended up in their ideal elementary school, parents agonized over what the process would be like for middle school and high school. I argue that it felt less empowering because it shifts the burden of equity from the state to the individual parent. Instead of fixing disparities, it makes parents responsible for navigating themâand blames them if they donât succeed.
The rationale that a parent is empowered by having a choice ignores vast inequities across families of different class and racial backgrounds. A parentsâ ability to search for schools and make a school decision depends on a host of external factors. Not all families are given the same tools or access, and when the options are so limited relative to the number of available seats, no one is truly empowered.
How do race and advantage and disadvantage show up in the decisions families make?
BAB: This unpaid school-search labor adds to the caregiving burdenâespecially for working mothers and those with inflexible jobs. I take on this topic directly in chapter 1 in the book and in a related article titled Intensive Mothering and the Unequal School Search Burden. Across class and racial/ethnic background, mothers take primary responsibility for the school search, increasing the labor of modern-day mothering.
Middle-class and more affluent parents often approached the process strategicallyâmapping out options, using spreadsheets, networking, visiting schools, speaking with teachers, principals and other parents. They felt more at ease networking and accessing resources during their search. Working-class parents frequently faced logistical barriersâlanguage access, work schedules, transportation, or simply not being looped into the same informational networks. The contrast highlighted how privilege often maps onto inequalities through the school search.
Black and Latinx parents often made decisions not just about academics, but about racial representation, cultural safety, and discipline policies. They engaged in racialized school decision-making labor. I break down the different forms of this racialized labor in chapter 3 of the book. For instance, they had to weigh the relative odds of schools that were not diverse but higher performing. They also had to constantly monitor schools and racial safety to monitor bullying and experiences of racism.
What should we do differently? What would a fairer system look like?
BAB: A better system would ensure that every school is high-quality, so the stakes of choosing arenât so high. That means equitable investment, transparent info, and desegregation. We have to invest in high-quality schools. In Chapter 4, I demonstrate how schools are still embedded in segregated neighborhoods which means regardless of school choice, schools are still unequal. The set of options a parent has access to is still determined by the neighborhood. Essentially school choice is a Band-Aid for a much larger issue. To make the school choice process more equitable, we need to simplify and support the process so that information isnât a class privilege. Second, we need to invest in all public schools so that choices are less competitive and uncertain. In the conclusion chapter, I describe several methods for making choice options more equitable, one strategy that Iâll highlight here, is that we must prioritize low-income student enrollment in highly sought after schools.
What message do you hope readers take away?
BAB: My main message is two-fold. First, I hope that readers learn that school choice is not just an individual issueâitâs structural. We must move away from blaming or praising individual parents and toward recognizing that these choices happen inside a deeply unequal system. We canât talk about empowerment without talking about the burdens that come with itâand who bears them. To create a more equitable public education system, we must address the inequalities that shape familiesâ choices.
Second, I hope readers understand kindergarten panic as labor and critically consider the increased labor required during the early years and how this makes parenting increasingly more difficult. Choice without support isn’t a real choice. Districts need to simplify and clarify the process, especially for families who face barriers. But more fundamentally, the goal should be to make every public school a high-quality optionâso that families donât have to rely on strategy and hustle just to access a decent education.
Bailey A. Brown is assistant professor of sociology at Spelman College.