Turkey has been going through several education reforms for the last decade. International examinations such as PISA and TIMMS, coping with the minimum standards set by the Copenhagen criteria as a European Candidate challenges Turkey to reform her education at all levels. Especially, the compulsory Basic Education Law 4304 enacted in 1997 recognizes that all children are to complete eight years of basic education, and was an important leap to increase the schooling of children from five to eight years. The World-bank report (2005) shows that with the policy change the education net enrolment rose from 81% to 90%. Nevertheless, due to insufficient investment and expenditure in areas such as health, education, and other social services, Turkey falls far behind in the UNDP report on Human development (2008). Although education is free of charge in public schools, there are marked disparities in access to quality education for children of low income families (Akar et al., in press; Human Development Report, 2008) depending on the type of school these students attend to the amount of tutoring they receive through private courses or tutorials (Kalender & Berberoglu, 2005; Caliskan, 2008). This can be claimed as an expected result of dominance of political issues over social and economic problems (Sozen & Shaw, 2003). Issues such as child labor (Dayıoglu, 2007), student underachievement (Caliskan, 2005), economic status (Ecevit & Kasapoglu, 2005) are some of the reasons evidenced as disadvantages of the schooling of the poor children in the literature. Urban schools that serve low-income students usually dominate the bottom rankings (Thompson, 2004). Increasing amount of internal migration to the more industrial and cosmopolitan cities impacts the school quality in the districts where migrants reside. In addition, the socioeconomic effects of migration also have a negative influence on child’s education outcomes (Lillard & Willis, 1994). Therefore, it is essential to understand how the urban poor evaluate their schooling and how they see their future in education. Findings of this study are valuable since they will provide evidence for policy makers and educators about the struggles the urban poor face in the national and international arena. The specific research question was: How do students assess their schooling and school outcomes with respect to school quality indicators, teacher and parent background, and household variables.

A cross-sectional survey design was used for this study. The instrument was designed based on the literature and informal interviews with teachers and students in schools in the peripheries of Ankara. Both open-ended and close ended items were included in the survey. Background variables were based on school quality indicators report (Mayers et al., 2000), PISA 2003 background variables, and other household variables. The scale reliability is a=.796. The survey instrument was pilot tested, and the administration was realized with the contribution of the MoNE Research Center. The sample consisted of 7th and 8th grade students defined as urban poor (N=1504). Of those students 54% were female (N=817) and 45.4% were male (N=687). About 33.6% of the sample (N=1499) reported that they migrated to the city from another region. Five of them left the answer blank. Data analysis will include both descriptive and inferential statistics.

Preliminary findings of the study support the literature on urban poor. For instance, more than 11% of the children are subjected to child labor, one third of the mothers (27.5%) are illiterate, and 45.9% are primary school graduates. Most of the mothers (82.7%) are housewives. Findings of this study may provide implications for urban school policies, and theory and practice in those schools from a global perspective. This study may show that poverty, and economic disadvantages are the basic reasons influencing school quality, school outcomes. For the sake of equality of opportunity, funding and access for better urban schools are all conducted from a centralized perspective in Turkey. Allegedly, this study may prove that schools in the urban peripheries need some different attention to provide equality of opportunity so that education policies guarantee that all students are valued and assured equal opportunities for educational success regardless of their socio-economic background.