Opportunity costs: Academic and relational dilemmas experienced by urban students attending a public, college -preparatory, boarding school

This study used qualitative methods, including interview and observation, to inquire into the experiences of economically disadvantaged, racial minority students attending a public, charter, college-preparatory, boarding school in an urban area. The purpose of the study was to examine the "context of choice" (Howe, 1997) in which urban students and their parents decide to attend the school and the issues and problems they may experience---with respect to maintaining cultural identity, peer relationships, and family membership---while in attendance. Based on the findings, it is argued that the context of choice in which urban students and their parents make and exercise this decision is defined by a "comparative or dual frame of reference" (Ogbu, 1987, 2003) with the conditions of the local public schools and the social and economic circumstances in which they live, which frames this choice not merely as an opportunity, but as an obligation to succeed given that it might not otherwise be available to them. However, this onus of opportunity can create academic and relational "dilemmas related to the task of achievement" for urban students which require them to develop certain psychosocial and cultural "competencies" (Perry, 2003) or else incur "opportunity costs" (Howe, 1997). Furthermore, it is argued that students' ability to resolve these dilemmas may be aided or impeded by features of the school environment (Phelan, Davidson, & Yu, 1993). This study raises serious issues about school choice that are of particular significance in a "post-Brown" era in which choice has effectively replaced desegregation as a more popular and politically acceptable means for closing the achievement gap and providing equal educational opportunity for urban students (Kozol, 1991; Vitteriti, 1999). As the findings of this study demonstrate, however, school choice may not, by itself, confer opportunity to urban students if certain conditions are not met and students do not have the means by which to realize the intended outcomes of their decisions (Howe, 1997). Under such conditions, it could thus be argued that choice would serve merely to remove responsibility for urban student underachievement from schools and to place the burden on students and parents themselves.