Samenvatting

In 2015 Amsterdam introduced a new primary school admissions system. This system is rooted in various desegregation pilots, including two based on the ‘controlled choice’ approach. In conjunction with one of these pilots located in West Amsterdam, we researched the criteria parents used while thinking about (de-)segregation in primary schools and parents’ attitudes regarding the controlled choice approach. Due to political developments between 2008 and 2011, we considered our data useless for policy discussions. The introduction of a new admissions system, however, gives our data a newfound relevance. This article therefore describes how parents in socio-economically diverse neighbourhoods think about segregation and school choice. The 249 parents we interviewed or surveyed supported schools with a ‘good mix’, but they had diverging opinions about the meaning of such terms. The parents were optimistic with regard to controlled choice, even if this could in some ways limit their own options. We conclude that the political resistance to desegregation at the primary school level cannot be justified by empirically unfounded claims about the perceptions and preferences of parents. We hope that our findings may lead to empirically grounded policy evaluation and policy making.