Virginia Riel
Biographic Data
| ID | 347938 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Virginia Riel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Virginia |
| FAMILY NAME | Riel |
| SIGNATURE | RIEL V |
| AFFILIATIONS | North Carolina State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6083-511X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
“Not Like Super High Numbers”: Parents’ Evaluations of Diversity in the K–12 School Search
Drawing on interviews with parents in a large metropolitan school district in the United States, this study examines how perceptions of diversity shape the K–12 school search for their children, with a focus on magnet school selection. Findings indicate that while some white parents viewed racial and socioeconomic diversity as a liability, others preferred diverse schools to expand children’s worldviews, choosing magnets outside of their affluent…
“A bigger factor than realized”: Parent perceptions of magnets concerning residency, proximity, and transportation
Public magnet programs offer pathways for parents to exercise school choice, students to increase achievement, and districts to increase student diversity and equity. This qualitative study investigates the parent perceptions that shape decisions for magnet application in a metropolitan district with a thriving lottery-based magnet program. Drawing on 23 interviews with parents, we identify several findings about parents’ perceptions of magnet pr…
You Only Get One Shot with Your Kid’s Education”: Examining Mothers’ Involvement in K-12 Education During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Serendipity or strategy? The college housing search and inequality
Housing arrangements provide the foundation for social life and interaction in college. However, we know little about how students locate housing opportunities. This study contributes to the literature on housing, search strategies, and class inequality during college by examining how students search for housing. Based on interviews with 40 undergraduate students across three universities, we find that socioeconomically disadvantaged students pri…
Nightclubs, Interactive Service Labor, and Objectification Practices: Workers' Experiences in Elite Nightlife
Nightlife settings have been the focus of sociological inquiry for decades, with existing studies primarily focused on consumers and selective entry to elite clubs. However, workers' experiences have been largely overlooked. This study examines workers' experiences in elite nightclubs, including getting hired and interacting with managers and consumers. Based on interviews with elite nightclub workers-including bartenders, bottle servers, hosts, …
I don’t know nothing about that’: How “learning costs” undermine Covid-related efforts to make SNAP and WIC more accessible
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—am…
Using Opinion Polling Data to Replicate Non-Experimental Quantitative Results Across Time and Space: An Exploration of Attitudes Surrounding School Desegregation and Resegregation Policies
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 hol…
Who Favors Magnets and Who Favors Charters? Political Ideology, Social Purpose Politics, and School Choice in the Upper South
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…
Building Expectations and Keeping Customers Happy: How Charter School Leaders Recruit and Retain Families
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’…
Siting Schools, Choosing Students? Protecting White Habitus Through Charter School Recruitment
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…
We’ve been thinking you were stupid all this time: ’ Racial microinsults and microinvalidations in a rural Southern high school
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 n…
Do magnet and charter schools exacerbate or ameliorate inequality
School choice typically refers to opportunities to enroll youth in public and/or private educational alternatives to traditional neighborhood public schools. While these options continue to grow in the United States under the umbrella of school choice, magnet and charter schools are the most common forms of public school choice. In this article, we review the development of school choice and the differing historical and philosophical origins of m…
Do magnet and charter schools exacerbate or ameliorate inequality
School choice typically refers to opportunities to enroll youth in public and/or private educational alternatives to traditional neighborhood public schools. While these options continue to grow in the United States under the umbrella of school choice, magnet and charter schools are the most common forms of public school choice. In this article, we review the development of school choice and the differing historical and philosophical origins of m…
I don’t know nothing about that’: How “learning costs” undermine Covid-related efforts to make SNAP and WIC more accessible
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—am…
Siting Schools, Choosing Students? Protecting White Habitus Through Charter School Recruitment
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…
Building Expectations and Keeping Customers Happy: How Charter School Leaders Recruit and Retain Families
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’…
Using Opinion Polling Data to Replicate Non-Experimental Quantitative Results Across Time and Space: An Exploration of Attitudes Surrounding School Desegregation and Resegregation Policies
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 hol…
We’ve been thinking you were stupid all this time: ’ Racial microinsults and microinvalidations in a rural Southern high school
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 n…
Do magnet and charter schools exacerbate or ameliorate inequality
School choice typically refers to opportunities to enroll youth in public and/or private educational alternatives to traditional neighborhood public schools. While these options continue to grow in the United States under the umbrella of school choice, magnet and charter schools are the most common forms of public school choice. In this article, we review the development of school choice and the differing historical and philosophical origins of m…
We’ve been thinking you were stupid all this time: ’ Racial microinsults and microinvalidations in a rural Southern high school
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 n…
Siting Schools, Choosing Students? Protecting White Habitus Through Charter School Recruitment
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…
I don’t know nothing about that’: How “learning costs” undermine Covid-related efforts to make SNAP and WIC more accessible
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—am…
Using Opinion Polling Data to Replicate Non-Experimental Quantitative Results Across Time and Space: An Exploration of Attitudes Surrounding School Desegregation and Resegregation Policies
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 hol…
Who Favors Magnets and Who Favors Charters? Political Ideology, Social Purpose Politics, and School Choice in the Upper South
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…
Building Expectations and Keeping Customers Happy: How Charter School Leaders Recruit and Retain Families
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’…
You Only Get One Shot with Your Kid’s Education”: Examining Mothers’ Involvement in K-12 Education During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Serendipity or strategy? The college housing search and inequality
Housing arrangements provide the foundation for social life and interaction in college. However, we know little about how students locate housing opportunities. This study contributes to the literature on housing, search strategies, and class inequality during college by examining how students search for housing. Based on interviews with 40 undergraduate students across three universities, we find that socioeconomically disadvantaged students pri…
Nightclubs, Interactive Service Labor, and Objectification Practices: Workers' Experiences in Elite Nightlife
Nightlife settings have been the focus of sociological inquiry for decades, with existing studies primarily focused on consumers and selective entry to elite clubs. However, workers' experiences have been largely overlooked. This study examines workers' experiences in elite nightclubs, including getting hired and interacting with managers and consumers. Based on interviews with elite nightclub workers-including bartenders, bottle servers, hosts, …
“Not Like Super High Numbers”: Parents’ Evaluations of Diversity in the K–12 School Search
Drawing on interviews with parents in a large metropolitan school district in the United States, this study examines how perceptions of diversity shape the K–12 school search for their children, with a focus on magnet school selection. Findings indicate that while some white parents viewed racial and socioeconomic diversity as a liability, others preferred diverse schools to expand children’s worldviews, choosing magnets outside of their affluent…
“A bigger factor than realized”: Parent perceptions of magnets concerning residency, proximity, and transportation
Public magnet programs offer pathways for parents to exercise school choice, students to increase achievement, and districts to increase student diversity and equity. This qualitative study investigates the parent perceptions that shape decisions for magnet application in a metropolitan district with a thriving lottery-based magnet program. Drawing on 23 interviews with parents, we identify several findings about parents’ perceptions of magnet pr…
Political science (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · School Choice and Performance (6 works) · Parental Involvement in Education (5 works) · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies (5 works) · Charter (4 works) · Public relations (4 works) · Charter school (3 works) · Economics (3 works)