Urban Research Initiative: Shopping for Schools

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This research investigation, supported under the Urban Research Initiative, deals with a central issue of American school systems: school choice. School choice has become a central tool in attempts to improve education and provide options to low-income parents. But critics argue that because information about schools is difficult to obtain and hard to interpret, low-income parents, if given choice, will not choose well if they choose at all. Many studies, beginning with those on the Alum Rock demonstration school choice program, have found that parents usually know very little about the alternatives available to them - - and this is especially true for minorities and lower SES parents. Indeed, one group has argued that the low level of parent information is the "Achilles Heel" of choice plans.School choice seeks to improve schools by introducing market-like reforms into an historical arrangement in which centralized school bureaucracies determined which schools children attended and in a system where parental input was minimal. Many analysts have argued that in this monopoly-like situation, schools have no reason to perform well. Choice, according to its proponents, will create a more competitive market for education, unleashing pressure on the schools to perform better.But markets require information to function well. Seizing on this well-known fact, critics of choice argue that education is a complex good, difficult to describe in a way that people understand, and that less-educated parents (who can probably benefit most from choice) are the least able to access and analyze information. In turn, given the lack of good information in the hands of "parent/consumers," the success of choice reforms is unlikely.Working with two stakeholder groups with considerable experience working with both public and charter schools in Washington, DC, the research team investigates how school choice embodied in the creation of charter schools in Washington, DC, affects parent behavior. In addition, the researchers use modern technology to provide a low-cost way of providing information on education choices to a population of inner-city parents. The researchers assess the effects of these lower information costs on parent choice behavior, and develop a knowledge base on how to disseminate school information effectively and efficiently.This study addresses directly one of the main objections raised by critics of choice who argue that, because of the costs of information, even if choice works it will help those who are better off rather than the poor.