Public Schools and Privileged Families: A Scoping Review of School Choice Studies

Abstract

This article examines how families with high educational and socioeconomic status relate to public schooling amid the global expansion of school choice policies, identifying patterns, meanings, and emerging tensions in their engagement with public education. A scoping review was conducted using Scopus, Web of Science, and SciELO, focusing on qualitative and mixedmethods studies published between 2017 and 2024 in English or Spanish. A total of 39 empirical studies met the inclusion criteria and were analysed thematically. The findings show that these families are not a homogeneous group. While the dominant trend is avoidance of public schooling in favour of private or selective options, a minority deliberately chooses public schools. Such choices are motivated by commitments to diversity, civic values, sense of neighbourhood belonging, or perceived academic quality, but are often selective and accompanied by strategies that reproduce privilege, including opportunity hoarding and parental intervention. The review highlights the progressive erosion of public schooling as a shared common good, alongside ambivalent forms of privileged engagement with the public sector, with important implications for educational inequality, social cohesion, and the democratic role of public education.