Abstract: A survey of a public school for migrant workers’children finds that these children have low expectations for their future and most of them are enrolled in vocational schools eventually when they graduate from the junior middle school; only a small percentage continue to study at high schools. This choice is a result built up by several bodies: first of all, the state“double-track system”gives vocational school and high school different implications; second, short of economic resources and knowledge storage, the migrant workers can hardly exercise effective supervision and offer proper help even though they have a higher educational expectation to their children; third, education authorities are only concerned about the children’s placement in a school rather than their further education, which leads to school’s“exclusive education”（in consideration of their status of migrant workers’children） instead of“inclusive education”. These mechanisms jointly affect the children. They choose vocational schools, and they also rationalize their choice. Therefore, to solve the problem of the children’s low education expectations, both the students’individual“self choice”and the “structural choice”from the institutional level should be considered.

Key words: migrant workers’children, educational choice, double-rack system, children of rural migrant workers, educational equality