Making choice right:
the diminution and restoration
of legitimacy
in a school choice system
Shelby Sissing UvA ID: 11205350 Research Master Social Sciences
University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Willem Boterman
Second reader: Bowen Paulle
Word count: 11,994 8 July 2018
Making choice right: the diminution and restoration of legitimacy in a school choice system
(Target: Journal of Education Policy)
Abstract:
Despite vast evidence that school choice contributes to school segregation and educational inequality, many countries have incorporated school choice policies into their education systems. This effect raises the question of the future trajectory of school choice: how will it continue in its contemporary form with such unequal outcomes? How does school choice remain ‘right’ for everyone while ‘not right’ for many? This paper explores the culmination of school choice through an examination of the diminution and restoration of institutional legitimacy in a school choice system undergoing institutional change. Drawing on interviews with school leaders and other education actors, this paper finds the decentralization of the choice system leads to its demise, with concerns emerging over inequality. Further analysis reveals a redirection of school choice guided by the rationalized myth of equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity is rationalized within the institutional change through the invention of a distance-to-school priority measure and the limitation of school leader influence in the choice process through the introduction of a new uniform admissions policy. Schools respond to the shift toward equality by marketing their inclusivity and downplaying school assets such as quality common in school choice. Similarly, school leaders redefine their professional identity toward that of advocates for equality. In summary, it is argued that the decentralization inherent in school choice systems undermines their legitimacy, and to make school choice ‘right’ again requires that a choice system undertake some measure of return to the value of equality.
Keywords: school choice; legitimacy; school leaders; institutional theory; school segregation
Introduction
School choice dictates that freer parental choice will improve education by creating competition between schools (Chubb and Moe 1990; Coleman 1990). By lifting bureaucratic controls and decentralizing school management, choice advocates claim schools will become laboratories for innovation, leading to the creation of local accountability systems, new teaching and learning methodologies, and competitive schooling models (Finn, Manno, and Vanourek 2000; Nathan 1996). However, despite the assertions of innovation and efficiency, school choice is not without criticism. Critics argue school choice is a ‘mechanism of class reproduction’ reinforcing the advantages of the middle class (Ball 1994, 13) and an instrument of ethnic and class segregation (Lareau and Goyette 2014; Orfield and Frankenberg 2013; Bell 2009; Andre-Bechely 2005; Bosetti 2004; Ball 2003). Research finds that school choice heightens the role of parental agency, recycling social inequality into educational inequality (Reay 2004); and enables schools to select self-advantageous student populations, contributing to segregation (Jennings 2010; Ball 2003; Whitty, Power, and Halpin 1998; Ball, Bowe, and Gewirtz 1995).
Undeterred by these criticisms, education systems around the world have incorporated school choice. This raises the question: how long can the educational scale favor efficiency over equality? How long until the effects of school choice are too urgent to continue on the same trajectory? And if or when this occurs, how will school choice change? This paper explores the culmination of school choice through an examination of the diminution and restoration of institutional legitimacy in a school choice system undergoing institutional change.
Legitimacy, as it pertains to this paper, is the ‘rightness’ of a school choice system as judged by the public. The concept originates from new institutional theory which emphasizes that organizational forms do not emerge from technological or material imperatives but rather from cultural norms, symbols, beliefs, and values (Scott 1995; Meyer and Rowan 1977). Legitimacy is the linchpin in the institutional theoretical apparatus as it is the perception of the public that an organization and its actions are proper and appropriate (Suchman 1995). It encapsulates how a school choice system maintains its appearance that it is right for the public. However, if legitimacy deteriorates, organizations must restore it by conforming to ‘rationalized myths’, i.e., the widespread cultural ideals that provide ‘a rational theory of how’ organizations should function (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 342). Thus, this paper examines how a school choice system rebuilds legitimacy by adopting and interpreting rationalized myths.
Amsterdam, the Netherlands presents a unique opportunity to study a school choice system because of its long history of open choice, creating a likeness to the schooling market idealized by choice advocates (Teelken 1990). In 2014, Amsterdam introduced the Urban Admissions Policy (UAP) [Stedelijk Toelatingsbeleid] which constrains school choice through a uniform primary school admissions procedure. The institutional change under the UAP suggests legitimacy concerns were in need of repair. Drawing from interviews with school leaders and other education actors, this paper examines how legitimacy is diminished in the Amsterdam choice system prior to the UAP and how it is restored after its implementation. From the original concern of inequality to the introduction of the UAP to the interpretations of schools and school leaders, this paper demonstrates how the rationalized myth of equality of opportunity is adopted to make the Amsterdam choice system right again. The first section presents my theoretical framework, engaging with the new institutional debate over legitimacy in schooling, explaining why an elaboration of institutional legitimacy offers better insight into how the choice system demonstrates its rightness while accounting for the relevancy of both the macro and micro-levels of rationalized myths for the restoration of legitimacy. The second section outlines the evolution of school choice in the Netherlands from religious pillarization to the contemporary meaning of marketization through the social forces of secularization, neoliberalism, and immigration. Subsequently, the third section briefly maps out the Amsterdam school choice context. Fourthly, I describe my methodological approach, which is based on semi-structured interviews with school leaders and other education actors. The fifth section is a presentation of my analysis which begins with a description of the legitimacy concern of inequality created in the pre-UAP environment and follows the rationalized myth of equality of opportunity from the macro-level of policy through to the micro-macro-level of interpretations by schools and school leaders. I
conclude the paper by discussing the trajectory of school choice and offering directions for further research into the legitimacy of school choice systems.
Theory
Brief overview of legitimacy and school choice
Since the inception of new institutional theory, schools have served as appealing sites for the study into legitimacy. Beginning with John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan’s seminal text ‘Institutionalized Organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony’ (1977), schools have been thought to exist within ‘institutional environments’, meaning, schools derive legitimacy from conforming to the cultural forces in the environment, like teacher credentials, governmental licensing, and curriculum requirements. Here, Meyer and Rowan explain how the legitimacy of schools is protected by their existence in the institutional environment:
Thus, (American) school districts have near monopolies and are very stable. They must conform to wider rules about proper classifications and credentials of teachers and students, and of topics of study. But they are protected by rules which make education as defined by these classifications compulsory. Alternative or private schools are possible, but must conform so closely to the required structures and classifications as to be able to generate little advantage. (my emphasis, 1977, 351)
Legitimacy is defined as the ‘extent to which the array of established cultural accounts provide explanations for [an organization’s] existence’ (Meyer and Scott 1991). By adopting systems of credentialing, licensing, and curriculum, schools demonstrate that they are functioning according to the norms and values of the wider environment, and therefore maintain their legitimacy. However, as Meyer and Rowan distinguish, when schools remove themselves from the institutional environment of public schooling, as private and alternative schools do, their ability to demonstrate conformity to the norms and values, and remain legitimate, becomes implicated. The cultural environment in which organizations exist extensively shapes their legitimacy (Scott 2003). So, by not belonging in the institutional environment, private schools are inhibited from gaining the legitimacy embedded within the bureaucratic rules and regulations. As a result, private schools are likely to either struggle or conform so closely that they hardly differ from public schools.
However, the dispersion of school choice policies has provoked debate with new institutionalism over how schools derive legitimacy from their cultural environments. School choice necessitates a decentralization of the schooling environment, i.e., the devolvement of power from the central government to the school or local governing bodies, to allow for schools to efficiently and innovatively respond to the needs and desires of parents. Some institutional scholars argue this ‘environmental shift’ (Rowan 2002; Powell and DiMaggio 1991) forges two schooling environments: institutional and technical (Meyer, Scott, and Deal 1983). Contrary to institutional environments, schools within technical environments are free from the bureaucratic and regulatory demands and, instead, must derive legitimacy from their
educational production and output like internal quality data or teaching styles (Meyer et al. 1983). This dichotomization of cultural environments has been criticized as futile as ‘even if market-driven schools are established on a relatively widespread basis, forces in the institutional environment will likely counter the drive to enhance their technical environments’ (Hoy and Miskel 1996, 232). That is, the forces of the institutional environment are too strong for schools in choice environments to evade schooling norms entirely. For example, a study on a U.S. charter school found, despite best efforts to present an alternative form of schooling, the school was forced to return to normalized conceptualizations of schooling like the inclusion of standardized testing, hierarchical management, teacher certification, and student attendance tracking to maintain legitimacy or otherwise risk closure (Huerta 2009). Furthermore, the division is incompatible as institutional and technical environments have become ‘blurry’ through the incorporation of technical forces like accountability measures into the institutional environment (H.D. Meyer and Rowan 2006, 21-22). While disagreement exists over the ingress to legitimacy, there is a general agreement within new institutionalism that schools must eventually conform to the cultural definitions of schooling to maintain legitimacy (Oplatka 2004).
In its exploration of legitimacy in a choice system, this paper avoids the dichotomization of institutional and technical environments for the reasons given, and due to the unique history of school choice in the Netherlands. As later explained, the Dutch schooling system originated from a commitment to difference, rendering the bifurcation of two environments inappropriate. Instead, this paper discusses how the decentralized nature of the Amsterdam choice environment impacts legitimacy, applying the relevance of the decentralized environment situationally to avoid the false binary of institutional and technical environments.
Restoring legitimacy in a decentralized choice system
This paper addresses criticism of legitimacy as poorly defined in new institutionalism by supplementing with Mark Suchman’s elaboration of legitimacy. Suchman (1995, 574) defines legitimacy as ‘a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.’. He continues by outlining three forms of legitimacy: (1) pragmatic legitimacy, which rests on the self-interested perceptions of an organization’s most immediate audience, (2) cognitive legitimacy, which refers to the perceptions of organizational behaviors as comprehensible, and (3) moral legitimacy, which reflects a ‘positive normative evaluation of organizations and their activities’ (Suchman 1995, 579). Moral legitimacy, which derives from new institutional theory, is most pertinent to the study of a choice system because it rests on the public judgment that something is the ‘right thing to do’. While the school choices of individuals might be suitable for pragmatic legitimacy, a choice system requires an understanding of the collective belief that it is the right or appropriate way of organizing schooling, which is best captured by moral legitimacy. Similarly, because a choice system requires the active support of parents, school staffs, and policymakers, it is beyond the scope of the judgment of simple inevitability put forth by cognitive legitimacy. This paper studies the moral legitimacy of the Amsterdam choice system by focusing on procedural and structural legitimacy, two sub-concepts of moral
legitimacy, which in the context of this paper, refer to the legitimacy of schools’ admissions processes and schools in the choice system respectively.
Procedural legitimacy refers to the judgment that a procedure is using socially accepted techniques and procedures to deliver socially valued results (Suchman 1995, 581). It requires the demonstration that an admissions process undertakes unbiased procedures to deliver fair, accountable student placements. Before the UAP, the decentralized choice environment allowed schools to operate admissions processes free from bureaucratic rules. Drawing from Meyer and Rowan’s (1978) research, the decentralized environment may leave schools unable to justify any ‘inconsistencies and inefficiencies’ because their autonomy impedes them from using the institutionalized explanations for techniques and procedures (Huerta 2009; Huerta and Zuckerman 2009; Oplatka 2004). Instead, schools in decentralized environments must explain irregularities through their outcomes and procedures (Meyer et al. 1983). Procedural and structural legitimacy ‘blend together at the margins’ (Suchman 1995, 581) as school admissions processes and schools do and should be considered in connection with one another. Structural legitimacy reflects the judgment that an organization as a whole is ‘acting on collectively valued purposes in a proper and adequate manner’ (Meyer and Rowan 1991, 50; Suchman 1995). It requires schools demonstrate to parents and regulatory groups that they are ‘right for the job’ (Suchman 1995, 579) of educating students. Decentralized choice environments complicate the structural legitimacy of schools in two ways. First, schools endure a higher level of scrutiny than those in non-choice environments because parents have a ‘considerable right to inspection and control’ (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 354) and the judgment of parents determines school stability (Huerta 2009; Huerta and Zuckerman 2009). Second, schools in choice environments must create innovative forms of schooling that exceed traditional conceptualizations of schooling to attract parents. By establishing unique forms of schooling, schools risk structural legitimacy by forsaking the accepted cultural definitions of schooling. Putting legitimacy at risk may lead to school closure by decreasing number of students or by the decision of a regulatory body. As a result, research has found schools in choice environments often return to the endorsement of legislatures or professional agencies and the generalized cultural definitions of schooling (Huerta and Zuckerman 2009; Oplatka 2004; Meyer and Rowan 1991; Meyer et al. 1982; Meyer and Rowan 1978) to maintain structural legitimacy.
As described, the decentralized environments of schools in choice systems may leave schools vulnerable to problems that put their procedural and structural legitimacy at risk. Burch (2007, 88) identifies three environmental sources of potential issues:
a) the level of ideological conflict in the field, b) the recurrence of a problem that affects actors who are vocal and not tied to the status quo, and c) actors’ ability to situate the problem in a broader institutional or policy discourse, for example by relating the problem to some established policy criterion or value, such as equity or efficiency.
According to Burch, there are three possible solutions to any of these problems: (1) organizations and their actors can ignore the problem, (2) they can explain it away as something more familiar, or (3) they can acknowledge the problem and reframe it. Reframing, the most common in institutional theory (Scott et al. 2000; Suchman 1995), is
essential because it reformulates the issue into something that merits collective support (Burch 2007). By regaining collective support, the institution can change and restore legitimacy. This paper, which begins with the institutional change created by the UAP, examines the reframing of the initial legitimacy concern, and the restoration of the procedural, structural, and overall moral legitimacy in the Amsterdam choice system through the institutional concept of ‘rationalized myths’.
Rationalized myths
First, they are rationalized and impersonal prescriptions that identify various social purposes as technical ones and specify in a rulelike way the appropriate means to pursue these technical purposes rationally. Second, they are highly institutionalized and thus in some measure beyond the discretion of any individual participant or organization. They must, therefore, be taken for granted as legitimate, apart from evaluations of their impact on work outcomes. (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 344)
Meyer and Rowan explain the concept of rationalized myths as widespread cultural ideals that provide ‘a rational theory of how’ organizations should operate (1977, 342). They are not necessarily something ‘false’, but are idealized cultural accounts of what is an ‘appropriate’ and ‘rational’ solution to a complex problem (Schmachtel 2016). Criticized as overly deterministic (Weick 1995), rationalized myths have been obscured from the original conceptualization put forth by Meyer and Rowan. Hallett (2010) explains that rationalized myths are two-fold concepts: they are macro-myths that organizations conform to that provide legitimacy, and conversely, they are micro- or local myths that require organizations to not only conform to them but to ‘maintain the appearance that the myths actually work’ (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 356).
At a macro-level, the conformity of organizations to rationalized myths that results in similarities is referred to as ‘institutional isomorphism’ (Scott 1995; DiMaggio and Powell 1983). Researchers document three isomorphic mechanisms that promote institutional conformity: mimetic isomorphism, normative isomorphism, and coercive isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). Mimetic isomorphism results from organizations adopting the practices of other successful organizations to reduce uncertainty and establish legitimacy. This form of isomorphism is quite common in schooling as schools often copy the practices of schools perceived as more successful to better their own reputations (Hoy and Miskel 1996). Normative isomorphism primarily comes from professionalization. For example, through certification standards, teachers receive similar training on teaching methods and classroom behavior which results in similarities across classrooms and schools. Coercive isomorphism occurs when organizations are coerced, forced, or persuaded to change due to issues of legitimacy by the organizations upon which they are dependent for funding, personnel, or legitimacy (Powell and DiMaggio 1991). Coercion may be exercised directly or indirectly by making accessibility to desired resources dependent upon organizational compliance (Beckert 2010). Coercive isomorphism is common among schools as they rely heavily on key agencies like governmental bodies or school boards (Rowan and Miskel 1999). It is important to note that while schools are subject to all forms of isomorphism, the
results of the isomorphic pressures are often moderate due to internal organizational arrangements and the interpretations and responses of organizational actors (Spillane et al. 2002).
Rationalized myths function as a template for organizations in that they allow ‘expressing in simple terms or images what theoretically can be expressed only through difficulty’ (Schmachtel 2016, 450). They are articulated through ‘organizational language’ (Scott 1995) which demonstrates conformity and provides organizations with legitimacy. Studies show policy documents and school websites or brochures incorporate organizational language to prove their legitimacy (Lubienski and Lee 2016; Oplatka 2004). Rationalized myths are also expressed through organizational practices. For example, in a U.K. study, Woods et al. (1998) found schools introduced new computer facilities across schools to demonstrate their ‘modern’ image despite no consistent findings that the facilities otherwise modernized the education of the schools. Organizations also conform to rationalized myths through ‘ritual classifications’. Ritual classifications are the creation and rationalization of systems of categories or rules that define the actions of schools, teachers, parents, and students (Berends 2015; Meyer and Rowan 1977, 1978; Bidwell and Kasarda 1980). They create a standardization of procedures and roles which forms a formal structure that buffers the layers of the organization and shields the organization from uncertainties in the outside environment (Meyer and Rowan 1978; Meyer et al. 1983). By conforming, organizations demonstrate their legitimacy.
At a micro-level, rationalized myths are ‘combined with local, embedded meanings and values to produce particular variations of local action’ (Binder 2007, 551). Not simply scripts ‘out there’, rationalized myths require actors to make sense of, interpret, and act on interpretations. To make sense of particular policies, school actors draw on ‘existing reservoirs of individual and collective knowledge [...] to decide on a response to policymakers’ recommendations’ (Spillane, Reiser, and Reimer 2002). For example, Stephen Ball’s work on the local response to education policy in the United Kingdom illustrates how ‘policy texts’ mutate as they are read and interpreted in different local contexts; as such, the meaning of the policy message shifts (1994). How organizations and actors link to rationalized myths is referred to as ‘coupling’ (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 1978). Binder summarizes coupling in two questions (2007, 548):
How do people in organizations go about the work of coupling their practices to environmental pressures? To what ends do people make their decisions, and with which tools do they craft their ideas about the ultimate goals of their organizations and their practical, everyday procedures?
Two forms of coupling are decoupling and recoupling. Decoupling enables actors within organizations to conform to rationalized myths by creating symbolic changes while masking underlying uncertainties and variations. It acts as a buffering strategy between a school, school actors, and the environment (Oliver 1991). Ignoring decoupling may leave schools perceived as inefficient or inconsistent, and lose legitimacy. As a result, school leaders may deliberately ignore and discount information to maintain the appearance that things are conforming to the rationalized myths as they should be, even if they are not (Liljenberg
2015). School leaders often engage in decoupling because of their unique intermediary role between the wider environment and the realities of the classrooms (Liljenberg 2015). Recoupling, oppositely, is the process of creating a tighter link between myths and actions where they were once loose. It is how myths are given tangible flesh within organizations (Hallett 2010). In his ethnography of a school, Hallett finds the myth of accountability is given ‘tangible flesh’ through a school leader’s increased surveillance of teachers’ curriculum, classrooms, and grading. When myths become ‘incarnate’, he states, they become subject to local processes that may transform the myth itself. Similarly, as school leaders respond, interpret, and embody myths, they also reconstruct their sense of self as school leaders and their sense of schools (March and Olsen 2005). How recoupling reassembles personal and organizational identity is best explained through sensemaking theory:
Thus the sensemaker is himself or herself an ongoing puzzle undergoing continual redefinition, coincident with presenting some self to others and trying to decide which self is appropriate. Depending on who I am, my definition of what is ‘out there’ will also change. Whenever I define self, I define ‘it’, but to define it is also to define self. Also, as once I know who I am then I know what is out there. But the direction of causality flows just as often from the situation to a definition of self as it does the other way (Weick, 1995, 20).
In summary, this paper examines how the Amsterdam choice system conforms to rationalized myths from the macro-level of isomorphism to the micro-level of coupling to restore procedural, structural, and overall moral legitimacy to the choice system.
Evolution of school choice in the Netherlands
Understanding how the Amsterdam choice system arrived at its critical juncture requires background knowledge of school choice in the Netherlands. The Netherlands has long had school choice under the auspices of ‘freedom of education’. Incorporated into the Constitution in 1917, freedom of education was introduced to mitigate a lengthy religious battle over education between Protestants, Catholics, and secularists. It ushered in a pillarization, or division along religious lines, of Dutch education by establishing the freedom of religious or ideological groups to establish schools based on their beliefs and the freedom of parents to choose schools by their religious or ideological beliefs. Presently, freedom of education ensures that all schools, regardless of private or public status, receive full public funding while maintaining substantial budgetary and operational autonomy and that all parents can freely choose schools. Despite the continuing commitment to school choice vis-à -vis freedom of education, research shows its modus operandi has evolved from its religious origin.
Through an amalgamation of secularism, neoliberalism, and immigration, freedom of education has evolved to resemble the contemporary school choice found across international contexts. First, the Netherlands became a predominantly secular country from the 1960s onward, and despite the diminished role of religion in society, pillarization in education
remained. This paradox, Karsten (1999) states, is due to the high levels of privatization of schools, centralization of school funding, and corporative structures of educational governing that made pillarization conducive to the marketized definition of contemporary school choice. For those reasons, pillarization endured in education despite receding from other social institutions. Second, in the 1970s and 1980s, Dutch education suffered a ‘crisis of legitimacy’ borne out of bureaucratic excess, as a result of the accumulation of new laws and policies introduced to address the ‘increased social complexity’ of the time (e.g., new policies for girls and women, cultural minorities, groups in special education, working-class children (Karsten 1999, 307)). This bureaucratic excess led to a view of the education structure as ineffective and illegitimate. In response, in the 1980s, Dutch education undertook a neoliberal turn by prioritizing efficiency in education. Education management transformed its language, structure, and behavior to incorporate the market values of neoliberalism. Education management and policy began incorporating economic practices and vocabularies to build up legitimacy. Greater autonomy and deregulation was awarded to schools, and the government began externally monitoring school quality and efficiency.
As the structure of education transitioned away from religious pillarization to marketization, the agency of parents similarly evolved toward consumerism as faith receded from choice decision-making. A ‘legitimate’ school is no longer one that denominationally fits but is one that is of high quality. Illustrating this shift to quality-based choice motivation, Karsten (1999) retells the story of a newspaper that went to court and won the right to publish school quality information gathered by the government monitor. The newspaper edition sold out within a few hours1. Studies document that quality is the predominant motivation for school choice in the Netherlands (Versloot 1990; Pieters 1992) over denomination or distance. Moreover, research shows parents perceive school quality as interconnected with the ethnic composition of schools (Dronkers and Avram 2015; Avram and Dronkers 2011; Jongejan and Tijs 2010; Driessen and Merry 2006). Schools with large populations of students with an immigrant background are viewed as lower quality while schools with a large population of white students are perceived as higher quality (Karsten et al. 2003). This phenomenon leads to the third explanation of similarity in Dutch school choice and international school choice: during the time of secularization in the 1960s, immigration dramatically increased from countries like Suriname, Dutch Antilles, Turkey, and Morocco. These groups mostly settled in the largest cities, and the schools their children attended became known as ‘black schools’ (Vedder 2006) or schools with high numbers of students with an immigrant background2. The language of ‘black and white schools’ was included in official policy documents until the 2000s. Freedom of education, like school choice generally, has exacerbated segregation between schools (Vermeulen 2001), with the consumer mindset increasing ‘white flight’ (Ladd, Fiske, and Ruijs 2009). This effect supports international research that school choice in the modern sense increases segregation between schools (Ball 2003; Whitty, Power, and Halpin 1998; Ball et al. 1995). Ultimately, while school choice in the Netherlands has not lost its title of ‘freedom of education’, it has adapted into the contemporary school choice model through the corporatization of schooling and the consumerism of parents.
The epithet of ‘freedom of education’ has protected the legitimacy of Dutch school choice despite the concern of segregation levels high by international standards (Ladd and Fiske
2009). However, in 2014, the city of Amsterdam implemented the UAP which effectively disrupted the traditional choice system by creating a uniform admissions process for all participating primary schools. The UAP outlines its aims as (BBO 2014, 1):
-The admission policy is the same for all elementary schools in the city; - The admission policy is simple and transparent;
- The admission policy guarantees the equality of rights; - The admission policy offers parents freedom of choice.
Under the UAP, the municipality sends parents a letter with school choice information before their child’s third birthday. Per instruction, parents visit the Schoolwijzer website, fill in their address, and receive eight priority schools determined by the distance from the individual address of the family. Parents rank a maximum of ten schools, which are entered into a lottery system. There are specific priorities to being admitted, such as (1) the student has a sibling already attending the school, (2) schools are within the student’s priority distance area, (3) student has attended the early education center attached to the primary school (if applicable), and (4) if a parent of the student is an employee of the school. Once parents receive their school lottery outcome, they have two weeks to secure their placement and enroll their child at one school. By examining the motivation for the institutional change of the UAP and its reverberatory effects and interpretations on schools and school leaders, this paper seeks to understand the direction of school choice in Amsterdam moving forward.
Background: the Amsterdam context
Over 210 of the 223 primary schools in Amsterdam participate in the UAP3. Both public [openbare] and private [bijzondere4] schools participate in the UAP and are similar in fundamental ways. Private schools, schools based on didactical or confessional principles (e.g., Montessori, Catholic, Protestant, Dalton, Islamic, Steiner), receive public funding and are subject to the same general national curriculum guidelines and teacher salary schedules as public schools. Similarly, all schools are managed by independent school boards, leaving the municipality and other government policymakers with virtually no operational authority for any one school. Lastly, all primary schools require a parental fee, although the differentiation is relatively small and can be waived5. In Amsterdam, the composition of primary schools is 47 percent public, 31 percent Christian (Catholic and Protestant), 11 percent Montessori, Dalton, or Steiner, 4 percent Islamic, 1 percent Hindu, 1 percent Jewish, and 1 percent other orientation (DUO 2017). Concerning the most significant share of schools in Amsterdam, research on Dutch school choice finds: urban public schools often have a majority of students with an immigrant background and are considered less attractive to parents (Merry 2015); most Christian schools are nominally religious with the majority of parents choosing such schools for non-religious reasons (Merry 2015; Dijkstra, Dronkers, Hofman 1997); and pedagogical schools like Montessori and Dalton often attract highly educated parents who are willing to commute greater distances to attend (Karsten et al. 2006; Van der Vouw 1994; Van Breenen et al. 1991).
This research on school reputation and parental choice suggests a possible concern of school segregation, which has been confirmed as high by international standards (Ladd et al. 2009; Karsten 2006; Karsten et al. 2003). The high level of school segregation contrasts to the relatively moderate levels of residential segregation in Amsterdam (Tammaru et al. 2016; Musterd 2005). The 2015/16 - 2016/17 ‘Monitor diversiteit in het basisonderwijs’ [Monitor diversity in primary education] report found that, within the last five years, the number of students attending schools with few highly educated parents has decreased, while the number of students attending schools with many highly educated parents has increased. Similarly, the number of students attending schools with many students with an immigrant background has decreased, while the number of students attending schools with few students with an immigrant background has decreased. This dynamic suggests an ‘enclave effect’ (Frankenberg and Diem 2013) in which highly educated, native Dutch students are secluding themselves into particular schools. Meanwhile, the number of students attending mixed (immigration background or education level of parents) schools has remained stable (Gemeente Amsterdam 2017). Of the over 63,000 children in Amsterdam primary education, nearly 40 percent are native Dutch, with the remaining students belonging to (descending in population share) Turkish background, miscellaneous non-western background, miscellaneous western background, Surinamese background, Moroccan background, and Antillean background (Diversity monitor 2017). As can be seen, the Amsterdam choice system stands out in its diversity both in schools and students.
Data and methods
My data derives primarily from recorded semi-structured interviews with school leaders and other education actors conducted throughout the fall and winter of 2017/18, as well as textual and online evidence consisting of the admissions policy website, school websites, other school promotional materials, and policy documents. The other education actors consisted of an education policy advisor from the municipality, a project leader of the admissions policy, and a founder of a school desegregation advisory group. The intention of these interviews with municipal policy advisor, policy project leader, and advisory founder was to gain a broader perspective on the institutional landscape of primary schooling in Amsterdam and the causes of the admissions policy. These interviews lasted between thirty to ninety minutes in length. Secondly, I interviewed school leaders, who are the officials that provide leadership in primary schools. Initially, I intended to select school leaders within one ‘local competitive arena’ (Glatter, Woods, and Bagley 1997) as if I were a parent inputting a home address into the admissions website and using the yielded priority schools as my sample. Due to concerns about limited time and access, I expanded my sample to all primary schools participating in the admissions policy. The schools were located across Amsterdam and included: five Montessori schools, four ecumenical (Christian) schools, two public, one Dalton, one Jenaplan, and one development-oriented school (see Table 1 in the appendix for school overview). I conducted interviews with eleven school leaders concerning twelve schools (one leader led two schools) and corresponded by email with an additional school leader. School leaders were white, native Dutch ranging in age from forties to sixties, and gender was
divided between eight women and four men. Nearly half of the leaders assumed their role at their current school within the last five years, while two have presided over their schools for more than twenty years. Most of the school leaders previously worked as leaders or assistant leaders at other Amsterdam primary schools. School leaders mostly remained with their school types (e.g., Montessori, public, Dalton, ecumenical) throughout their careers.
In preparation for the interviews with school leaders, I researched the schools’ biographies on the admissions policy school catalog (Schoolwijzer) website, on individual school websites and school Facebook pages, and on a website detailing Dutch school information and quality (Scholen op de Kaart). I paid particular attention to language, pictures, and videos of school description, marketization, or diversity. Concurrently, I collected images of school biographies on the admissions policy school catalog, their website homepages, and of the maps provided on the school catalog of school locations within Amsterdam. In the interviews with school leaders, I sought to understand the impact of the uniform admissions process on their schools, as well as how they positioned their schools under the new admissions process. The semi-structured interview questions covered the motivations for and communications of the policy, leaders’ perceptions of the policy and its impact on parental choice, marketization of schools, and competition and collaboration with other schools. I also included the images of schools’ biographies, websites, and maps to encourage ‘active inference’ (DiMaggio 1997) within school leaders so that they may actively reflect on their schools’ position in the Amsterdam schooling environment. ‘Active inference’ was used to examine the agentic sense-making processes of school leaders regarding the institutional change under the UAP. Interviews took place in school leaders’ offices as well as in classrooms and ranged from forty to ninety minutes in length. Half of the interviews concluded with tours and included brief interactions with students and classrooms. These tours allowed glimpses into the daily happenings and atmospheres of the schools.
My position as a white American with limited knowledge of the Dutch language had a significant impact on the research. Interviews were conducted in English, and while my respondents spoke satisfactory English, the language gap had an impact on mutual understanding at times. In certain circumstances when leaders were unable to translate a word or phrase into English, I asked them to speak it in Dutch, and with the aid of a translator, I translated the phrases into English in my notes. My lack of understanding also impaired my ability to interpret extemporaneous observations in schools. For websites and documents, I used Google Translate. My outsider status also shaped discussions regarding topics particular to the Dutch context, especially the topics of ‘freedom of education’ and ‘black and white schools’. I argue my position as an outsider also functioned as a provocation for active inference as school leaders more explicitly and descriptively explained such concepts and their applications (Voyer 2018), aiding in the unmasking of institutional values taken-for-granted in the Dutch context.
I subsequently transcribed, coded and analyzed all interviews using the software program ATLAS.ti. First, I used structural coding (Saldaña 2009) to divide interviews by three sub-questions: ‘How was the UAP created?’, ‘How are the aims of the UAP communicated?’, and ‘How do schools legitimate themselves within the uniform admissions process created by the UAP?’. Interviews with leaders were analyzed by all of three sub-questions, while the
interviews with other education actors were analyzed by the first two questions. Then, I coded deductively and descriptively guided by the theoretically-informed sub-questions.
(1) How was the UAP created?
This question seeks to understand if or how a legitimacy problem occurred before the implementation of the policy, what rationalized myths were drawn upon to justify the institutional change, and whether or which form of institutional isomorphism occurred. Codes reflected the motivations given for the policy (‘fairness’, ‘equality’, ‘transparency’, ‘student distribution’, ‘mixing schools’) and the actors mentioned as instigators of the policy (‘municipality’, ‘parents’, ‘school boards’, ‘schools’).
(2) How are the aims of the UAP communicated?
This question investigates the institutionalized rules, rationalized myths, and values drawn upon in discussion of the UAP. Codes reflected the increasing bureaucracy of the admissions policy (‘priority catchment areas’, ‘uniformity of policy’, ‘procedure’, ‘digitalizability’, ‘blind system’) and the behaviors of parents (‘strategic’ and ‘non-strategic’ choices, ‘commuting’, ‘strategy’).
(3) How do schools legitimate themselves within the uniform admissions process created by the UAP?
This question explores the concept of coupling, i.e. how schools and school leaders interpreted the policy and its use of rationalized myth. Individual codes reflected scripts relating to diversity and class, pedagogical values, non-academic values, and marketization.
I then re-analyzed the data to revise further and embellish codes concerning my last two sub-questions. For sub-question (2) ‘How are the aims of the UAP communicated?’ I additionally coded data regarding the impact of the policy on school leaders’ professional duties (‘school planning’, ‘lack of parent communication’, ‘mediating parents’ expectations’); and school leaders’ perceptions of parents’ choice motivations (choosing for ‘pedagogy’, ‘diversity’, ‘homogeneity’, and ‘proximity’). Regarding sub-question (3) ‘How do schools legitimate themselves within the uniform admissions process created by the UAP?’, I found leaders and schools (via the artifacts described above) legitimating their schools as either ‘mixed’ or ‘of the neighborhood’, so I created additional codes reflecting these legitimations (such as, for diverse: ‘Amsterdam is diverse’, ‘society is diverse’ and for neighborhood: ‘intersection of social domains’, ‘(mis)match between school and environment’). I also created data displays (Miles and Huberman 1994) of the three sub-questions to understand better how the various issues and concerns interacted with each other and with urban change, a topic important but outside the scope of this paper. Findings are arranged thematically and informed by order of the three sub-questions. Quotations from the respondents are used to demonstrate the concepts and are selected to both reflect the ‘common view’ and to provide notably illustrative examples.
Findings
The decentralization of the choice system causes a legitimacy concern of inequality
Before the implementation of the UAP, the Amsterdam school choice environment was decentralized: schools’ admissions processes were independent of governmental oversight, and parents’ choices were unrestricted by registration timeframes, maximum limits of applications, or school catchment zones. Additionally, registration and admission were transacted in person or by phone, leaving admissions processes informal, undisclosed, and lacking defined procedures. The obscurity of these admissions processes provoked uncertainty among parents. Consequently, some parents adopted strategies to secure school placements, of which school leaders articulated three: early registration, multiple registrations, and preschool registration. First, parents exploited the absence of a uniform registration age by registering at their preferred schools long before their children were of appropriate school age. Two school leaders recounted identical narratives of parents bringing in sonograms to reserve placements for their unborn children. While the validity of the tale is unknown, its diffusion attests to the urgency and uncertainty felt by parents. In the second strategy, parents simultaneously registered at multiple schools so they could choose between schools after admissions were finalized. The lack of registration information exchange between the decentralized schools permitted this tactic. Third, parents registered their children at specific preschools that would afford priority to their desired primary schools. A school leader explains ‘strange things’ happened in Amsterdam primary schools as a result of these strategies.
In the morning there were many people who went out to Amsterdam-Zuid with the bakfiets with the blonde-haired children in them [...] They started to sign in before they were born or they went to the preschool [...] but they sign in at the preschool because if you are in the preschool you can go to the school. So there were strange things happening to go to these popular schools.
The school leader invokes class (read: bakfiets as a markedly middle-class cargo bicycle (Boterman 2018)) and race (read: ‘blonde-haired children’ as white) by distinguishing that white, middle-class parents possessed the knowledge to exploit the ‘rules of the game’ (Bourdieu 1994) to secure placements at popular schools. As a result, a school leader clarifies, ‘other populations didn’t have the opportunity to take their children to these schools’. The opaque, disconnected admissions processes lacked the clear techniques and procedures necessary for fair outcomes, thereby privileging parents with the knowledge and resources to engage in strategies while disparaging those (implied by school leaders as non-white and non-middle class) parents with limited knowledge or resources. This finding supports research claims that the agentic nature of school choice enables middle-class parents while hindering poor and working-class parents (Sattin-Bajaj et al. 2018; Sattin-Bajaj 2014; Lareau and Goyette 2014; Ball 2003; Reay 1998). Similarly, the lack of oversight over admissions processes permitted schools to refuse students discriminatorily without consequence. The freedom of the decentralized choice system, the policy project leader stated, ‘allowed schools to choose children whichever way they wanted’. An Amsterdam
study of Turkish- and Moroccan-Dutch parents echoes this suspicion. In the study, parents shared anecdotes of native Dutch children receiving admittance over their children despite registering at an earlier time (Paulle, Mijs, and Vink 2016). Succinctly, the opaque procedures and unregulated outcomes of the decentralized choice environment created an unequal school choice system.
Suchman (1995) stated that to maintain procedural legitimacy organizations must demonstrate that they are acting upon socially accepted techniques and procedures that deliver socially valued outcomes. The above discussion illustrates that the admissions processes failed such judgment. As a result, the problems caused by the procedural
illegitimacy were framed as unequal and discriminatory. Simultaneously, schools also
struggled with the legitimacy of their admissions processes. An effect of the uncertainty-driven parent strategies was ‘dirty waiting lists’, which led to schools suffering from unreliable registration outcomes, as a school leader describes.
You would have children registered at four or five different schools and one child can’t go to four or five different schools, just the one school. So if a school is popular they can pick and choose which isn’t fair to other children. So in order to make it more fair, and voorspelder [predictive]... More reliable for the schools themselves because ten pupils can make the difference between having an extra group or not, and if you have an extra group you have an extra teacher and so on. So that would really cause problems.
In conclusion, the decentralized collection of admissions processes created legitimacy concerns of both inequality and unreliability. The unreliability mobilized schools and school boards to consider a new way of conducting admissions, and the inequality guided the aims of the UAP by framing the pre-UAP choice system as something meriting collective attention.
The equality of opportunity myth provides a solution
The term 'neighborhood' is central to the admission policy. All parents get in their direct residential environment takes precedence over an equal number of schools. Equality is a core concept: all parents have an equal chance to come to a primary school. ([translated] BBO 2014,1)
The initial document of the UAP declares equality of opportunity as the right solution to the legitimacy problem. Centering the policy on equality of opportunity demonstrates that the new admissions process is serving a collectively held value by addressing the accusations of inequality in the pre-UAP decentralized choice system. Equality of opportunity is defined as the ‘obligation to ‘use the opportunity’ [...] on the family, so that the role is defined to be an active one, with a responsibility for achievement upon [the family]’ (Coleman 1966, 8). Accordingly, equality of opportunity is not to be confused with equity, which would require regulatory oversight to balance the class and ethnic composition of student admissions in schools (Orfield and Frankenberg 2013). In fact, before the UAP, the Dutch city of Nijmegen tested an equity-driven admissions pilot that failed lasting implementation. The backlash
from the ‘forced diversity’ of the pilot—as the policy project leader termed it—deterred the municipality and school boards from crafting a similar policy. However, mistakenly, some school leaders did cite desegregation as the aim of the UAP. The legacy of the Nijmegen pilot, as well as the coincidence that the funding for previous admissions pilots within Amsterdam originated from a budget marked ‘diversity’, are likely the cause of this error, the policy project leader clarified. However, recent circumstances also suggest an increased awareness of school segregation in Amsterdam, such as the formation of a school desegregation research center; the publication of a municipal report titled Segregatie in het
Amsterdamse onderwijs [Segregation in Amsterdam Education6]; various parent-led school integration initiatives; and a 2015 demonstration in which primary school children marched in the streets wearing white t-shirts with the words scrawled ‘Is dit wit genoeg voor u?’ [Is this white enough for you?]. While desegregation is not the aim of the UAP, school leaders drew upon their ‘existing reservoirs of [...] knowledge’ (Spillane et al. 2002) on school segregation and Amsterdam’s legacy of ‘black and white schools’ to reinterpret the meaning of the policy.
Instead of executing the ‘forced diversity’ of the Nijmegen pilot, the UAP administers equality of opportunity through the distance-to-school priority mechanism, as the municipal policy advisor describes:
We give them eight schools in which they have priority, but they don’t have to use it. It is still the freedom of the parent to choose each school. But we want them to have the possibility to go in their neighborhood, so we give them priority. The discussion before we implemented this kind of system was ‘Should we give six priority schools or eight or two or ten?’, and we did research about what is the optimal amount of priority schools for parents that they still feel there is enough chance to go in their own neighborhoods and have enough choice of different schools... You can imagine if you had just priority in two schools there’s not a lot of freedom in it. So we chose eight priority schools. Because in the list of eight, in all the addresses in the city there are two schools that are public and two that are special.
The policy project leader elaborates that the individualization of the distance-to-school approach neutralizes the social heritage of priority catchment zones and increases equality of opportunity7:
It used to be [in the pilots] that you had preference by street region and outside you didn’t. And that could, for some people, be very beneficial, but it could also be very un-beneficial for others because the city has in its history different parts, and the different parts stand for different social classes. But over the years it has changed. Right now in the [post-UAP choice environment] none of that history is there anymore. It is purely your house towards the eight schools—the walking distance. So you forget about history you forget about social class or that kind of hierarchy. That is gone. And I think in 2018 there’s nothing more fair than that. Because in a city like Amsterdam those divisions shouldn’t exist anymore.
Rationalized myths ‘identify [...] social purposes as technical ones and specify in a rulelike way the appropriate means to pursue these technical purposes rationally’ (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 344). Alongside being the appropriate solution, equality of opportunity is rationalized
into a technical prescription by the creation of observable, measurable procedures and outcomes within the distance-to-school mechanism. By doing so, the UAP proves the uniform admissions process is acting on sound practices toward a collectively valued goal, restoring procedural legitimacy; and redeems the moral legitimacy of the choice system by demonstrating that, with nearly all schools participating, it is ‘the right thing to do’.
Restoring legitimacy via institutional isomorphism
‘Lots of ways to pressure’: schools’ participation in the UAP
Different districts within Amsterdam had previously experimented with admissions pilots, but the municipality decided a uniform admissions process was necessary to solve the choice system’s issues fully, and thus the municipality instigated the creation of the UAP. Below, the municipal policy advisor narrates the process of convincing school boards to agree to a uniform admissions process:
It is always in connection with each other—the power. But some power is based on the law. And you have a lot of power if the law says you have the power. So the school boards have the right to choose their own admissions policy, so we don’t have that much power in that. At the same time, we said we think it is really good for the parents in the city that all the school boards choose one system because of the equality [and] because of the possibility to go to school in your neighborhood. It is a really good idea. And then we said we have funding here and we can support the transformation to a new system. So if we do not support it...if we don’t give them some kind of money for it to work it out, not that much can happen because schools don’t have much money. So we have, at the same time, a lot of ways to pressure.
Though the legal role of the municipality in the Dutch education system is near nonexistent in the decentralized choice environment, the municipality of Amsterdam used its role as the supplier of resources to enforce coercive isomorphic pressures on to school boards. The municipality controls aspects of education that are legally peripheral, but essential to the functioning of schools. It awards funding for a variety of ancillary schooling initiatives and programs, distributes school information for choice-making, and approves building charters for new schools. As such, it can apply pressure in a variety of ways to coerce boards and their schools to participate in the UAP. As the municipal policy advisor stated, the goal of equality of opportunity guided the coercion of school boards. Thus, by adhering to the UAP, schools and school boards demonstrate they are also conforming to the myth, and procedural and structural legitimacy is bolstered through the introduction of a uniform, transparent admissions procedure with specific rules.
‘No backroom deals’ through ritual classification
The transparent admissions procedure had a consequential effect on the role of school leaders in the choice process. Before the UAP, school leaders experienced a constant, year-round fielding of parents’, sometimes aggressive, requests. School leaders were pressured to decide between ‘which parent [to put] higher on the waiting list: the one on the phone or the parent already on the waiting list’. After the UAP, as a school leader illustrates, their duties were streamlined.
Three times a year [parents] can hand in a form if we are their first choice. Then they hand it in here, and administration puts it in a web-based form, and we get information. So we need to say how many places we have. So let’s say we have twelve places every period and ten children put our school as their first choice so now we have two places left. Now we know these two places will probably be filled from second choice or third choice from around our school. We don’t need to do that much, just when we get the form we need to fill it in, and then send letters when they are placed in our school. But it is all digital, so that is quite easy.
A defined system of roles and duties set to a uniform schedule and coordinated on a digital platform replaced the informal, disjointed admissions processes. Student placements became ‘fully automated according to the applicable admissions rules’ (BBO 2014), limiting the school leaders’ role to background tasks like inputting data and mailing admittance letters. This ritual classification creates a buffer between the school and any potential inconsistencies in admittance outcomes, thus absolving school leaders and schools of the responsibility, as one school leader explains:
So it is a very strict regulation and no discussion about it. There’s no—in Dutch we say achterkamertjespolitiek [backroom deals]—there’s no influence to get into a school. It is regulated [...] It objectivates the process, so it’s not us…
Nevertheless, the increased regulation was met with ambivalence by some. A few private school leaders preferred the previous admissions processes because it allowed them to prioritize the families passionate about their school’s pedagogy. One such school leader appealed to the municipality to append the priority rules to include one for pedagogical interest, but the municipality rejected the proposal. Others agreed in sentiment with a priority-by-pedagogy rule, but predicted it would only lead to ‘parents abusing the possibility’. This abuse, they claimed, would increase inequality between schools. The school leaders similarly correlated the absence of the ritual classification to unequal practices. This linkage emerged through school leaders’ discussions about the schools not participating in the UAP. They described such schools as high fee, very popular, ‘white’ schools in Amsterdam-Zuid that were ‘only for wealthy people’. These schools did not join the UAP because, as one school leader claimed, ‘they would have a changing school population or they would have to say no to parents they could say yes to before’. Refusing to adhere to the ritual classification of the UAP became an indication of exclusivity and discrimination, thereby reinforcing the commitment of both the UAP and participating schools to equality of opportunity.
Interpreting the myth: the marketization of ‘mixed’ and ‘neighborhood’ schools
Schools must conform to the equality of opportunity myth to prove that they are right for the changed choice system, but they must also interpret and maintain the appearance that the myth actually works (Hallett 2010). Schools did so, not by ‘automatic script following’ (Binder 2007) but by engaging in Mary Douglas’s concept of ‘institutional bricolage’ (1986; Cleaver 2012) which is the combining of ‘already available and legitimate concepts, scripts,
models, and other cultural artifacts that [organizations] find around them in their institutional environment’ (Campbell 1998, 383). Schools interpreted the equality of opportunity myth through their marketization as ‘mixed’ and ‘neighborhood’ schools. These characterizations symbolize that these schools are acting in proper ways to become inclusive products of an equal opportunity to choose, while also showing that schools are conforming to specific definitions of schooling. This demonstrates that the symbolism of ‘mixed’ and ‘neighborhood’ eclipses the unique schooling potentials.
School marketing is crucial in the Amsterdam choice system. School leaders described the hustle of maintaining (and funding) current websites with attractive content in the forms of fun stories, photos, and videos. Schools also advertise through flyers, brochures, and even Facebook ads. Additionally, the Schoolwijzer website created under the UAP acts as a one-stop school catalog for parents to compare between schools, intensifying the importance of digital marketing. Below the marketing campaigns of ‘mixed’ and ‘neighborhood’ schools are discussed more extensively. (See Table 1 in the appendix for an overview of schools’ personalized ‘mixed’ or ‘neighborhood’ descriptions).
The ‘mixed’ school
Seven of the thirteen schools characterized themselves as ‘mixed’. Schools marketed their diversity (or desire for more diversity) in a variety of ways. At one school, white parents led an initiative encouraging more white families to attend the previously ‘black’ school. The initiative convened in a Facebook group titled Samen naar de school [Together to school], distributed fliers around the neighborhood, and wrote to local newspapers on the success of the school’s diversity. Another school advertised its increasing numbers of highly educated parents on its website to signal to parents that it was, in the school leader’s words, ‘safe’. Other schools addressed diversity with mission statements like ‘children of all backgrounds are welcome’. Another school expressed its diversity through its logo: a line drawing depicting three children’s faces with differently shaded complexions.
Schools interpreted equality of opportunity as a manifestation of the symbolism of diverse student populations. School leaders maintain the myth by drawing upon the cultural script of diverse schools translating into real-world student success and the cultural model of Amsterdam as a diverse city. Regarding the first, school leaders explained a ‘mixed’ school teaches students to ‘respectfully work together’ so they may become ‘good participants in society’. This script follows the discourse that diverse schools instill students with the democratic skills needed for getting along in a multicultural society, and can be used as a marketing asset (Turner 2017; Reay et al. 2007). Second, school leaders express that ‘mixed’ schools are legitimate by drawing upon the reputation of Amsterdam. Amsterdam, a city renowned for its multiculturalism, is home to approximately 180 nationalities as evidenced by a campaign put forth by the municipality8. The diversity of Amsterdam became a model for school diversity; as one school leader stated, ‘If you’re in Friesland, okay, there you don’t have much choice, but here there’s a whole mixed society. What are you doing with only white, rich children? It’s unfortunate.’ Similarly, a school leader discussed the whiteness of his school as ‘not good because Amsterdam is not white, Amsterdam is colored’. In these discussions, school leaders demonstrate that non-‘mixed’ schools are not right, and do not demonstrate structural legitimacy, for the Amsterdam choice system.
However, a few school leaders further problematized the marketization of ‘mixed school’ by pointing out the contradiction of a ‘mixed school’ with segregated age groups. One explains:
If you look at the numbers at this moment, they’re mixed, but if you look at the classrooms, then you see that the lower groups are turning completely black and the rest of the school is still white. So if you look at numbers, then you think well it’s fifty-fifty, that’s a great result. But in reality, there’s no mix at all.
By unmasking the inconsistency between being a ‘mixed school’ and being a school with mixed classrooms that create enriching opportunities for students to engage in diverse interactions, the quote above illustrates the concept of decoupling. Schools maintain the ‘mixed school’ interpretation despite classroom discrepancies. Due to the interview-based nature of this research, this paper cannot attest to decoupling; however, as the quote reveals, the subjectivity of marketing as a ‘mixed school’ is difficult, if not impossible, to account for if investigated. As such, this dissonance could lead to structural legitimacy concerns.
The ‘neighborhood’ school
Half of the schools characterized themselves as a ‘buurtschool’ or ‘neighborhood’ school. This marketing approach was expressed in schools’ mission statements using language like ‘we welcome all of the children in the neighborhood’ or ‘we are a reflection of our neighborhood’, and through localized marketing strategies. Most of the schools hung fliers in their immediate areas. One school hosted a neighborhood festival to attract prospective parents. Another advertised in a local housing catalog and distributed leaflets in neighborhood mailboxes.
While the marketization of the ‘mixed’ school neatly fits as an interpretation of equality of opportunity, the ‘neighborhood’ school characterization seems less aptly suited. Under the UAP which already encourages parents to select nearby schools through the distance-to-school mechanism, why did these distance-to-schools use the neighborhood as a marketing tool? Two clear explanations emerged: the school as a site for friendship and the school as a reflection of the local environment. Regarding the former, school leaders stated that schools are more than education institutions but also sites of relationship-building. One school director explains that ‘neighborhood’ schools provide easy accessibility for student friendships and support networks for parents: ‘if there’s a problem a parent can ask another ‘Oh can you pick up my child?’. A neighborhood school is nice… Children can play with the children from school on the weekend and the vacation.’. Second, schools created cultural analogies between them and their local environments. School leaders describe their schools as ‘reflections’ or ‘mirrors’ of their neighborhoods. School leaders, like the one below, explain that the culture—the food, the architecture, the people—of the neighborhood shapes school identity.
De Pijp is quite rich culturally and diverse, and we need to work with that. Like the architecture, but also the people who live here, what you can eat, and what you can do. There’s so much really close to the school, and we try to work with that.
