@article{barnes_riel_2022, title={"I don't know nothing about that:" How "learning costs" undermine COVID-related efforts to make SNAP and WIC more accessible}, ISSN={["1552-3039"]}, DOI={10.1177/00953997211073948}, abstractNote={Scholars have focused on administrative burden or the costs of claiming public benefits. Learning, psychological, and compliance costs can discourage program participation and benefit redemption. Using 60 in-depth qualitative interviews with participants of the SNAP and WIC programs, we offer thick descriptions of how beneficiaries experience compliance, learning, and redemption costs—a subset of learning costs regarding how to redeem benefits—amidst COVID-19 policy changes. Although policy changes were poised to reduce compliance costs and ease conditions that create redemption costs in each program, the learning costs of policy changes prevented many program participants from experiencing the benefits of these policy transformations.}, journal={ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY}, author={Barnes, Carolyn and Riel, Virginia}, year={2022}, month={Feb} }
 @article{riel_2022, title={Building Expectations and Keeping Customers Happy: How Charter School Leaders Recruit and Retain Families}, volume={63}, ISSN={["1533-8525"]}, DOI={10.1080/00380253.2020.1817811}, abstractNote={ABSTRACT Using qualitative data collected in three charter schools over the course of 14 months, this article analyzes how involvement expectations played a role in charter school recruitment practices and shaped personnel-parent relations. Through various recruitment strategies, personnel built involvement expectations among prospective parents, treating them as valued customers whose happiness carried consequences for funding. Personnel drew on parents’ financial networks, neighborhood connections, and social media contacts to recruit families, as for-profit charter school budgets rely on the recruitment and retention of parents who can volunteer, serve on committees, provide transportation, court donors, and recruit similar families.}, number={2}, journal={SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY}, author={Riel, Virginia}, year={2022}, month={Apr}, pages={296–315} }
 @article{riel_2021, title={'We've been thinking you were stupid all this time:' racial microinsults and microinvalidations in a rural Southern high school}, volume={24}, ISSN={["1470-109X"]}, DOI={10.1080/13613324.2019.1579185}, abstractNote={ABSTRACT Racial microaggressions in school have gained increasing attention in recent years. However, scholars often neglect students’ experiences of racial microaggressions in rural schools. To fill this gap, this study employs in-depth interviews with 26 students to examine two forms of racial microaggressions – microinsults and microinvalidations. While racial microinsults are slights to students’ belonging, ability, and innocence, microinvalidations negate racially marginalized students’ experiences through meritocratic and colorblind ideology, or treatment as an outsider. This study finds that black and mixed-race students interpreted racial microinsults using microinvalidations, minimizing the salience of race and asserting meritocratic ideology. White students both elucidated the prevalence of racial microinsults and espoused them during the interviews. These findings underscore the impact of incorporating white and multiracial students’ perceptions of racial microaggressions in school, and they suggest the power of meritocracy and colorblindness to mask mistreatment of black and mixed-race students.}, number={2}, journal={RACE ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION}, author={Riel, Virginia}, year={2021}, month={Mar}, pages={262–281} }
 @article{riel_2021, title={Siting Schools, Choosing Students? Protecting White Habitus Through Charter School Recruitment}, ISSN={["1573-7861"]}, DOI={10.1111/socf.12745}, abstractNote={While many scholars agree that charter school enrollment contributes to segregation between schools, the role of siting decisions in recruitment to non‐urban charters has been overlooked. Drawing on 14 months of fieldwork to examine student recruitment in three charter schools, this article demonstrates how personnel used intentional site selection, geographic lottery priorities, tailored programs, and other recruitment strategies that catered to local communities and created predominantly white spaces. This study builds on existing knowledge about white flight between schools but from an organizational perspective, illustrating how school personnel can work to create and sustain white habitus to recruit families. These findings also contradict ideals about school choice; while charter schools are ostensibly available to families regardless of where they live, I find that charter school personnel targeted, sited in, and tailored recruitment to the pool of prospective families they wished to attract—predominantly white areas. The article contributes to the literature by demonstrating the importance of charter school organizational practices to school segregation.}, journal={SOCIOLOGICAL FORUM}, author={Riel, Virginia}, year={2021}, month={Aug} }
 @article{parcel_bauldry_mickelson_smith_riel_boden_2021, title={Using Opinion Polling Data to Replicate Non-Experimental Quantitative Results Across Time and Space: An Exploration of Attitudes Surrounding School Desegregation and Resegregation Policies}, ISSN={["1552-3381"]}, DOI={10.1177/00027642211033285}, abstractNote={A renewed call for replications has emerged in social science research. An important form of replication involves exploring the extent to which findings from a given study hold in other contexts. This study draws on opinion polling data to replicate key findings across time and space based on an original study in one location analyzing attitudes toward public school assignment policies. The replication finds that many of the original findings hold, though one important exception reflects the changing context. We note that the increasing availability of relatively inexpensive methods of quantitative data production facilitates replication and comment on how the temporal interval between the original study and the replication may influence the extent to which findings replicate. We argue that largely successful replications help to clarify the conditions under which findings replicate, and that sociologists are in the early stages of determining which strategies work best for replicating which findings.}, journal={AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST}, author={Parcel, Toby L. and Bauldry, Shawn and Mickelson, Roslyn A. and Smith, Stephen S. and Riel, Virginia and Boden, Madison}, year={2021}, month={Jul} }
 @article{riel_mickelson_smith_2021, title={Who Favors Magnets and Who Favors Charters? Political Ideology, Social Purpose Politics, and School Choice in the Upper South}, ISSN={["1552-3381"]}, DOI={10.1177/00027642211033288}, abstractNote={School choice is an increasingly important feature of the US educational landscape. Numerous studies examine whether a particular form of school choice promotes student achievement or whether a type of school choice discourages or encourages diversity by race, ethnicity, and ability. Studies also examine attitudes toward school choice, but these studies are typically limited to the views of parents, teachers, and administrators rather than public attitudes. We contribute to this literature by studying public opinion about magnet and charter schools in five southern school districts. Using a new and unique dataset, we examine if social background characteristics, political ideology, and attitudes toward the role of public schooling, neighborhood schools, and school diversity influence citizen opinion regarding magnets and charters. We find that more educated, higher income, and older individuals do not support charters, while conservatives and Republicans do. Whites are less likely to favor magnets than other races, while the more educated are more likely to favor them. Those who believe public schools should operate for the common good support magnets, as do those who favor diverse schools. However, those who favor neighborhood schools support both charters and magnets. We interpret our findings within the context of case studies of the respective locations and suggest that public opinion studies motivate public policies regarding educational choice.}, journal={AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST}, author={Riel, Virginia and Mickelson, Roslyn Arlin and Smith, Stephen Samuel}, year={2021}, month={Jul} }
 @article{riel_parcel_mickelson_smith_2018, title={Do magnet and charter schools exacerbate or ameliorate inequality?}, volume={12}, ISSN={["1751-9020"]}, DOI={10.1111/soc4.12617}, abstractNote={Abstract}, number={9}, journal={SOCIOLOGY COMPASS}, author={Riel, Virginia and Parcel, Toby L. and Mickelson, Roslyn Arlin and Smith, Stephen Samuel}, year={2018}, month={Sep} }