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How does competition for school resources, along with racial and socioeconomic biases, shape parental preferences for schools? In this article, I investigate how school attributes affect preferences and choice, which sheds light on the processes that maintain school segregation. To do so, I conduct a survey experiment that explores parental preferences and the tradeoffs inherent in the process of school selection using school profiles that resemble those available on widely used education data platforms. I find that parents hold the strongest positive preferences for learning opportunities and overall school achievement compared to other attributes, including school racial and socioeconomic composition. Additionally, though parents prefer schools that have higher equity rankings, highly equitable schools are less desirable to parents than schools with more status and learning opportunities. However, parents also hold independent racial and socioeconomic preferences and —on average—avoid schools with more students of color and low-income students. Furthermore, results suggest they are largely unwilling to make tradeoffs that would result in schools with higher fractions of students of color or low-income students. Taken together, this study links prior studies on the segregating effects of educational data with literatures on school segregation by illustrating the specific dimensions that drive school choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the surge in homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic, with estimates showing an increase from 2-3 percent to approximately 11 percent of families opting for homeschooling. Despite this growth, homeschooling receives relatively little research attention compared to other education alternatives, prompting an invitation for rigorous academic research submissions for a special issue of the Journal of School Choice addressing American homeschooling.

The college choice behavior of graduate business school applicants is studied. A stochastic utility model is proposed and estimated by use of a sample of students admitted to Carnegie-Mellon University. The specific formulation used is the conditional logit model. Results indicate that such factors as net cost, quality, and distance of applicant's home from school are important determinants of college choice. Specific probability computations are used to illustrate the results for a typical decision maker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does ‘‘choosing a home’’ still matter for ‘‘choosing a school,’’ despite implementation of school choice policies designed to weaken this link? Prior research shows how the presence of such policies does little to solve the problems of stratification and segregation associated with residentially based enrollment systems, since families differ along racial/ethnic and socioeconomic lines in their access to, and how they participate in, the school choice process. We examine how families’ nearby school supply shapes and constrains their choices. Drawing on a unique dataset consisting of parents’ ranked preferences from among one urban district’s full menu of public schools, we find that Hispanic, white, and black parents share a strong preference for academic performance, but differences in their choices can be traced to variation in nearby supply. Our findings illustrate how the vastly different sets of schools from which parents can choose reproduce race-based patterns of stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When school choice policies position young people to compete with one another to access public educational resources, students stand to experience these policies in not only academic, but also civic dimensions. Young people's very encounters with competitive school choice policy through their day-to-day schooling constitute a civic experience. This article, then, explores how students who encounter competitive school choice policies come to understand themselves and other youth as citizens. We pursue this line of inquiry through a critically-oriented, qualitative case study conducted with a racially, ethnically, linguistically and socioeconomically diverse group of 36 students undergoing Chicago's competitive high school admissions process. Our findings strongly suggest that competitive school choice policies position youth to see their fellow citizens (and themselves) as individuals with unequal degrees of civic entitlement and capacity, who must earn their rights, and who have limited civic obligations to others. This article concludes with a discussion of implications for school choice policy equity, civic learning, and the role of youth as powerful policy actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of charter schools on school integration in the Little Rock, Arkansas metropolitan area. We find that charters are less likely to be hyper-segregated than traditional public schools (TPS), but TPS have compositions more closely reflecting the region. However, differences in each case are slight. Using student-level data to follow students who left TPS for charters, we find that most transfers improve integration levels at the schools they left. This finding is attributed to the fact that most transfers involve minority students leaving predominately minority schools or White students leaving predominantly White schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School choice is expected to place pressure on schools to improve to attract and retain students. However, little research has examined how competition for students actually operates in socially embedded education markets. Economic approaches tend to emphasize individual actors' choices and agency, an undersocializedperspective, whereas sociologicalapproachesemphasizesocial structures suchas race, class, and institutions over agency, an oversocialized view. In this study, I examine the interplay between structure and agency in education markets to (a) examine how a school's position in the market hierarchy influences how it is represented and viewed as a rival by network competitors and to (b) explore how a school's position in the network of competitors influences the possible and actual strategic actions that schools adopt in response to market pressures. Using case studies from New Orleans, I find that school leaders' positions in the socially constructed market hierarchy and in a social network of competitors influence their actions, which further determine their market positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade has witnessed the emergence of a new type of player in primary and secondary education in the Asia Pacific. This type is the transnational corporation (TNC) specializing in schools. I refer to these organizations as Education TNCs, which I define as private firms that operate for-profit schools in multiple countries. This paper examines the rise of Education TNCs that run international schools in Asian countries. While a great deal has been written about for-profit education in Western countries, edu-business in the Asia Pacific has received less attention. This paper works to fill that gap. I trace the rise of the region's major Education TNCs and analyze their efforts to expand. Against the expectation of 'school choice' advocates that for-profit schooling should bring diversity through competition, I find that the growth of Education TNCs in the Asia Pacific has been a story of a few large, marketing-oriented players offering similar packages. Educationists in the Asia Pacific should pay attention to Education TNCs for two reasons. First, the activities of Education TNCs in the international school sector can shed light on what for-profit schools would look like if governments in the region were to allow school choice reforms. Second, since these firms are large, influential, and motivated to succeed in the lucrative Asia Pacific market, they may have a greater and greater impact on the education landscape in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents evaluate the reputations of the schools when making judgements about their desirability. They try to approximate the quality of schools and the social environment and contrast those with their hopes and fears concerning their child’s education. We aim to clarify how the reputations of schools are constructed in Finland and Chile and what sorts of reputational categories, hierarchies and preferences of schools and classes families form when making a choice. Bernstein’s instrumental and expressive orders are applied as tools to analyse these reputations from qualitative interview data. The amount and type of expressive order turned out to be the crucial factor when comparing schools’ reputations and in the making of choices. While in Chile the expressive-social order in terms of contributing to habitus was seen as the most important factor in constructing school reputations and shaping preferences, in Finland the expressive-personal order in the form of school contentment was highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the context of twenty-first century educational reform efforts, school choice options have led to an increase in the number of Afrocentric charter schools. As a school choice option, charter schools that incorporate an Afrocentric approach are more prevalent in large urban school systems disproportionately populated by African-American children and youth. This study examined available data on the performance of Afrocentric charter schools based on their standardized statewide adequate yearly progress (AYP) status. Using systematic research methodology, a keyword search of research databases and internet search engines, 27 Afrocentric charter schools in the USA were identified. Twenty three of the schools met the criteria for analysis, and only 34 % of those schools achieved or exceeded statewide standards in testing and met their state's AYP goals. Implications for future studies are discussed. The research team contends that Afrocentric charter schools must gain greater legitimacy, using standardized accountability measures, in order to become a credible school choice option to failing urban public schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aims of the study were to examine changes in school segregation across different types of municipalities between 1998 and 2011 in Sweden, and to explore the extent to which these changes are the consequences of school choice. Multilevel models were applied to register data using a counterfactual approach. The results showed that school segregation with respect to migration background and educational achievement had increased over time, while social segregation remained rather constant. The degree of school segregation varied largely across different municipality types, and it was concluded that school choice was a determinant of school segregation. The findings have strong policy implications and are discussed in relation to the recent educational reforms in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Under new school-choice policies, schools feel increasing pressure to market their schools to parents and students. I examine how school leaders in New Orleans used different marketing strategies based on their positions in the market hierarchy and the ways in which they used formal and informal processes to recruit students. This study relied on qualitative interviews, observations of board meetings, and board-meeting minutes from a random sample of 30 schools in New Orleans. Findings indicate that marketing was a very common strategy. Yet even though choice policies were meant to give parents, not schools, power in selecting where their children attend school, some schools found ways to avoid enrolling disadvantaged students, often bynotmarketing. Faced with the pressure of accountability and charter renewal, these schools traded greater funding for potentially greater averages in student achievement. At the same time, some schools that were oversubscribed invested in marketing and recruitment anyway to draw less affluent parents to the school, who might not be aware of the open application and enrollment process. I discuss the implications of these marketing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This is an exploration of methodological debates related to ethnographic research. Reflection on conducting research on school choice in an Australian regional centre is the beginning point for a discussion of what Appadurai describes as a dialectical relationship between the neighbourhood and its capacity to exist and reshape itself in relation to outside forces. The place of the researcher is considered in relation to a regional context and the possibility that within such a context, the urban researcher could be a ‘stranger’. The notion of the ‘strange’ researcher is used to explore belonging and through it, geographic imaginaries of regionality. The case is made that the production of locality in this region contributed to a researcher ‘lock out’ because local knowledge about school choice was being unsettled. The paper takes up the question of how research in a region can contribute to understandings of ethnographic research as unbounded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Providing parents and students a choice to attend schools other than their assigned neighborhood school has been a leading theme in recent education reform. To evaluate the effects of such choice-based programs, researchers have taken advantage of the randomization that occurs in student assignment lotteries put in place to deal with oversubscription to popular schools and pilot programs. In this study, I used an agent-based model of the transition to school choice as platform for examining the sensitivity of school choice treatment effects from lottery-based studies to differences in student preferences and program participation rates across hypothetical study populations. I found that districts with higher participation rates had lower treatment effects, even when there were no differences in the distributions of school quality and student preferences between districts. This is because capacity constraints increasingly limited the amount of students who are able to attend the highest quality schools, causing the magnitude of the treatment effect to fall. I discuss the implications of this finding for interpreting the results of lottery-based studies involving choice schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the primary aims of choice policies is to introduce competition between schools. When parents can choose where to send their children, there is pressure on schools to improve to attract and retain students. However, do school leaders recognize market pressures? What strategies do they use in response? This study examines how choice creates school-level actions using qualitative data from 30 schools in New Orleans. Findings suggest that school leaders did experience market pressures, yet their responses to such pressures varied, depending in part on their perceptions of competition and their status in the market hierarchy. Some took steps toward school improvement, by making academic and operational changes, whereas others engaged in marketing or cream skimming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine parental choice in the context of lower secondary schools in urban Finland by means of qualitative content analysis of interviews conducted with upper-class parents (n=33). The analysis concentrates on the social construction of selective school choice within a public education system. The families in question were willing and able to choose their selective classes in schools in which intake is based on aptitude tests. This practice was justified on meritocratic grounds and was therefore not considered a class practice in the parental discourse. We argue that the capacity of upper-class families to transform economic capital into embodied cultural capital becomes an asset in the competition over study positions. The process includes the transfer of trump cards acquired in the field of culture – such as via music or sports, with their acknowledged interconnectedness with social position – to the field of public comprehensive education, despite the fact that social background should not define the allocation of pupils to schools in Finland. The role of the transmission of capital in this process is misrecognised, despite the fact that the result is social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I chronicle the recent history of efforts to broaden school choice in the Commonwealth of Australia and the opposition to these efforts put forth by Australia’s largest teacher union, the Australian Education Union (AEU). Evidence is presented on the positive effects that flow from the public funding of nongovernment schools and of the perception held by principals that less external regulation improves school functions. In spite of this, the Union continues to oppose choice efforts. I conclude that, at least in Australia, the influence of the AEU has placed impediments in the way of increased school choice and autonomy. Readers in other countries may draw their own conclusions from these observations in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous research has found that the images of universities formed by prospective students greatly influence their choices. With the advent of international branch campuses in several higher education hubs worldwide, many international students now attempt to construct images of these institutions when deciding where to study. The aim of this research is to identify the sources of information and other influences that impact upon the images of international branch campuses formed by prospective undergraduate students. The study involved 407 students studying at nine international schools in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was found that recommendations and feedback resulting from personal relationships was by far the most influential factor shaping the images of institutions constructed by students. It was also discovered that elite institutions can benefit from positive home campus images based on heritage and prestige, which positively influence the images constructed of the international branch campuses operated by these institutions. The implications of the findings for higher education institutions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies parental decision making in a unique school choice program--a universal voucher system in a middle- and upper-income suburban/rural school district. A survey of parents found that applicants and nonapplicants looked similar across many personal characteristics. Choice applicants appeared to be more involved in some ways and were significantly less satisfied with their district schools. Satisfaction also represented a significant predictor of applying for a scholarship and remained so after controlling for participant background variables, several of which were significant predictors themselves. Parents cited educational quality as the most important reason for applying for the program. They were not, however, concerned with school safety or supporting religious values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a long-standing concern among education researchers and policy makers that public school choice may lead to increased racial isolation. Improving on aggregate comparisons, I examine the sorting of students into charter schools by tracking individual students from their charter school of enrollment back to the school they were enrolled in immediately prior to the switch to a charter school, allowing for a direct comparison of school racial demographics between the two sectors. I find evidence that the process of charter school choice in Indianapolis leads to higher degrees of racial isolation and less diversity within schools than is present in the underlying process of student school transfers in the public school district from which a majority of these students came. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world-wide competition of higher education programs makes education institutions to seek for most efficient ways to attract students. The presented academic research is devoted also to the issues on motives and influencing factors for the choice of study programs. The methods applied in the current paper are as follows: analysis of scientific publications, focus group discussions, surveys of possible future students. For the evaluation of different aspects of choice a scale of 1-10 was used. For the data analysis of the survey descriptive statistical analysis, cross tabulations and correlation analysis, as well as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and factor analysis were applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives / Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas / Arquivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas is the property of Educational Policy Analysis Archives & Education Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Public school choice has become a common feature in American school districts. Any potential benefits that could be derived from these policies depend heavily on the ability of parents and students to make informed and educated decisions about their school options. We examined the readability and complexity of school-choice guides across a sample of large urban districts. These guides are intended to assist parents in learning about their child's options and to help them make informed decisions about schools. We found that none of the guides examined were written within the range considered appropriate for all adults to comprehend. In large urban districts where there are a large proportion of parents that have low levels of literacy, it is likely that many parents will have difficulty comprehending the information presented in the choice guides. We provide some simple steps that could be taken to improve readability of these guides. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following decision theory (Boudon, Raymond. 1974. Education, Opportunity, and Social Inequality: Changing Prospects in Western Society. New York: Wiley.), social origin strongly affects educational decisions, especially at transition points in educational attainment. In Japan, the fierce competition in gaining access to the next level of schooling intensifies the impact of educational decisions on students' future careers. In addition to selecting a certain school, families are forced to decide whether or not to invest in shadow education. Thus far, socioeconomic background and parents' educational aspirations, in conjunction with students' academic achievement, have been deemed influential to such decisions in Japan. The agency of the student is rarely even considered. Based on calculations from the 2011 Hyogo High School Students' (HHSS) survey, the theoretical approach presented in this article stresses the importance of acknowledging the existence of a multitude of actors involved in each phase of the decision-making process, including the students themselves, especially when explaining inequalities in modern societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives / Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas / Arquivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas is the property of Educational Policy Analysis Archives & Education Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper builds upon prior research attempting to answer the question ‘Does money matter?’ in public education by offering some insight into the potential advantages of charter schools over their district counterparts. In order to develop an accurate model of the true relationship between resources and performance, Adkins and Moomaw [(2003). “The Impact of Local Funding on the Technical Efficiency of Oklahoma School.”Economics Letters81(1): 31–37] suggest the use of a technical inefficiency model. Along these lines, we employ panel data of Ohio public schools to measure the potential technical efficiency gains of charter schools over traditional public schools using a stochastic frontier production model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We examine the determinants of gender differences in schooling choices using data on 290,000 secondary school applicants in Ghana. Over a quarter of female students choose home economics as their preferred field of study compared to two per cent of males. We find that schooling choices vary significantly with academic performance and educational norms. Higher performing female students and those from districts with a history of gender parity in educational attainment are less likely to choose home economics. Differences across geographic areas account for more of the variation in schooling choices than observable individual, family, and school-level characteristics can explain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although research on Tier 2 interventions for early mathematics is accumulating, such efforts remain far behind those for reading, especially regarding specific features such as the ideal time to begin an intervention. The present study investigated the effectiveness of a Tier 2 intervention using a single subject multiple baseline, across-groups design with two cohorts of second graders. Because the two cohorts of students were given the intervention at different times during the second grade year, the study also documented whether the timing of the intervention affected acquisition and retention of second grade mathematics competencies. Finally, the study tracked student performance up to the first semester of the third grade year to document any sustained effects. The results show that the supplemental intervention was effective for both cohorts, but differences in performance indicate that the timing of the intervention may affect the degree of success. In addition, for some participants, the positive effects of the intervention were sustained into the third grade year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

University of Wisconsin and National Bureau of Economic Research We derive a formula to determine the degree to which a school choice program may harm public school stayers by luring the best students to other schools. The "cream skimming" effect is increasing in the degree of heterogeneity within schools, the school choice take-up rate of strong students relative to weak students, and the dependence of school outcomes on student body quality. We use the formula to investigate the cream skimming effect of hypothetical voucher programs on the high school graduation rate and other outcomes of the students who would remain in public school. We find small effects across a wide variety of model specifications and types of modest voucher programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School choice, through private school vouchers or direct government subsidies, is a mechanism of outsourcing government services in the United States, Europe, South America, and the Pacific Rim. While extensive research exists on the effects of private school choice programs, nearly all focus on test score outcomes. Lost in the heated debates about the effectiveness of private school vouchers is substantial discussion of the effects on parental satisfaction. Drawing from a federally funded evaluation of a means-tested private school choice program in Washington, DC, we examine whether customer satisfaction is greater when education is delivered through a market-based governance structure. Because the program was oversubscribed in its early years of operation, vouchers were awarded by lottery, allowing us to experimentally determine the impacts. Our analysis reveals evidence that the program had a sustained positive impact on parental satisfaction. Moreover, positive student achievement and attainment impacts strengthen the validity of parental satisfaction as a reliable outcome measure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives / Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas / Arquivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas is the property of Educational Policy Analysis Archives & Education Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study explored the experiences of 14 young people (aged 16 to 24) with a disability, who had accessed social services within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) within 12 months of the dates during which the study was conducted. Through in-person and online focus groups, youth were asked to highlight their programs' positive and constructive attributes and to makes suggestions about how these services could be improved. Content analysis of the semi-structured interviews showed that on the positive side, programs offered a place to belong, an opportunity to share their feelings, and a safe space. The analysis also showed that programs could be enhanced through reducing the size of the groups and increasing the number of sessions. Suggestions for future programs were mixed with some participants preferring disability-focused groups and others preferring groups that are inclusive of all youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In this essay, we examine the racial politics of education in the six decades after Brown. We consider the state of educational policy in an era in which market reform advocates often invoke the spirit of the Brown decision even as the Supreme Court has largely vacated the legal framework provided by Brown to desegregate schools. Background: Educational policy post-Brown has focused largely on expanding market reforms such as school choice, high-stakes testing, and federal and state accountability mechanisms in lieu of the radical shifts in the distribution of educational opportunities for which Brown called. Setting: We discuss these market-oriented trends in San Francisco and Philadelphia. Findings: While many of these interventions have contributed to the growing racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic segregation in public education, efforts to realize more just and democratic schooling persist in these same urban school districts. Conclusion: We conclude with a call to educational leaders to partner with local communities to revive Brown’s promise for more just, diverse, and equitable schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In college admissions and student placements at public schools, the admission decision can be thought of as assigning indivisible objects with capacity constraints to a set of students such that each student receives at most one object and monetary compensations are not allowed. In these important market design problems, the agent-proposing deferred-acceptance (DA) mechanism with responsive strict priorities performs well, and economists have successfully implemented DA-mechanisms or slight variants thereof. We show that almost all real-life mechanisms used in such environments--including the large classes of priority mechanisms and linear programming mechanisms--satisfy a set of simple and intuitive properties. Once we add strategy-proofness to these properties, DA-mechanisms are the only ones surviving. In market design problems that are based on weak priorities (like school choice), generally multiple tie-breaking (MTB) procedures are used and then a mechanism is implemented with the obtained strict priorities. By adding stability with respect to the weak priorities, we establish the first normative foundation for MTB-DA-mechanisms that are used in New York City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School choice is presented by some as a panacea to the challenges facing education in the United States. Acceptance of choice as a solution, however, is far from universal. This article examines two possible contributors to choice adoption: ideology and political culture. Political culture was found to better explain the complex phenomenon of choice adoption than political ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the parent decision-making processes underlying school selection in Nepal. The analysis is based on primary survey and focus group data collected from parent meetings in diverse local education markets in two districts of Nepal in 2011. It highlights three main arguments that are less frequently discussed in the context of school choice, including in developing countries. First, children who go to public schools play a significant role in their own decision-making on schooling; this complicates the currently predominant conceptualization that schooling decisions are primarily made by parents and school officials. Second, the gradual growth in private schools has led to significant sorting of students and created a stigma around public education. Finally, in contexts such as Nepal, that suffer from political conflict, and poor conditions for law and order, a school's proximity to their home becomes a greater priority for students and families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the empirical analysis of the effects of a school choice policy in Estonia. The article shows that relying on markets and giving autonomy to the schools over student selection will produce admission tests, even at the elementary school level. This article’s contribution is to show that a school choice policy experiment with schools free to select students will produce between-school segregation effects based on residential and background characteristics. However, the interpretation of these effects is complex because, when compared with the premarket, residential choice model, it diminishes segregation based on income and family socioeconomic status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past few decades, the figure of the market has clearly made its way into the field of education. For some authors, it represents an alternative to regulation by the public authorities, a different form of co-ordination which is better able to meet the objectives of the education systems. Through a secondary analysis of the PISA 2006 database, we test this hypothesis, as well as an alternative one which suggests that the quasi-market, rather than being linked positively to effectiveness of the education systems, would be associated with the students' achievement dependence on their socio-economic and cultural background and on the social composition of the school they are enrolled in. Our findings suggest that the quasi-market regulation (school autonomy and competition for student recruitment) (1) is not linked to effectiveness and (2) tends to be associated with a stronger link between schools' social composition and student achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the proliferation of choice policies in education, parents are increasingly positioned as 'consumers' tasked with choosing the 'best' school for their children. Yet a large body of research has shown that the process of selecting a school is far more complicated than policy-makers and researchers often predict. This article uses ethnographic data on middle-class parents in a large city who are considering sending their children to a diverse neighborhood public school to further develop our understanding of school choice. Drawing from sociological research on consumption as a social and cultural process, we examine the intersections between parents' choice of a particular school (i.e. consumption) and their own identity construction. Our data show that the act of choosing a school can become, for parents, a means of expressing and enacting a particular identity. In this case, the intersections between identity and choice pushed many parents - invested in seeing themselves as liberal urbanites - towards an urban public school. We suggest that similar dynamics could have different outcomes for other groups of parents and that the symbolic nature of the school choice decision has broader relevance and merits further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in reputation between schools and in classes within schools shape parental choice in the Finnish urban context, even if the differences in school performance and the risks of making a 'bad' choice are relatively small. This study analyses the instrumental and expressive orders of schools in a specific educational context. Two overlapping local school choice spaces emerge: the local space of school catchment areas, and the selective space of the city in interaction with neighbouring cities. Entry into the selective space requires different forms of parental capital, and may reproduce educational and social distinctions. Institutions that provide less future exchange value according to the parental conceptions, with socially and ethnically mixed student populations and low expectations of pupils' contentment are seen to be worth avoiding. The discussion on the choice between 'good' and 'bad' schools seems to be superficial and to conceal certain educational reproduction processes, which do not officially exist in the Finnish education system. Choosing between classes (general and classes with special emphasis) within a school also works as a distinction strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three arguments regarding racial equity have arisen in the school choice debate. Choice advocates charge that choice will improve access to quality schools for disadvantaged minority students (Chubb & Moe 1990; Coons & Sugarman, 1978; Godwin & Kemerer, 2002; Viteritti, 1999). Critics argue that choice is unlikely to benefit minority students, but they are divided as to why this may be the case. Some maintain that unfettered choice leads to racial segregation (Henig, 1996; Mickelson, 2005; Saporito, 2003); others maintain that while choice may be successful in reducing segregation at the building level, choice programs may be problematic to the extent that they segregate schools at the classroom level (Wells & Crain, 1997; Wells, Holme, & Vasudeva, 2000; Wells & Roda, 2009; West, 1994). I use data from the eighth-grade wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to examine these questions. Results indicate that the racial composition of magnet schools is not statistically different from regular public schools; however, magnet schools are more heterogeneous at the classroom level, but only with respect to White/Hispanic racial composition. In particular, honors classes in magnet schools are significantly more diverse than honors classes in regular public schools, but only with regard to White/Hispanic diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on 12 months of fieldwork in Hyderabad, India, this paper describes the emergence of ‘international’ schools that are only accessible to upper-middle class and elite families and provide forms of cultural capital increasingly important for middle-class employment – ‘communication skills’, ‘open-mindedness’ and ‘exposure’. The role of these schools in the educational strategies of my informants reveals the limitations of education as a route to social mobility in the context of differential access to social, economic and cultural resources, as well as the ways in which local people engage with their position within a globalised economy as they make educational choices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although the high level of achievement experienced by British-Chinese pupils in schools is well documented, the Chinese community in the UK is a relatively under-researched ethnic group. There is only patchy information on ways in which British-Chinese parents and children engage with education. It is often presumed the success of Chinese pupils is due to conformist cultural practices leading to the enactment of effective cultural capital. In this paper we examine support strategies adopted by professional and non-professional British-Chinese parents of young people in secondary schools in the East Midlands of England. Through demographic and qualitative interview data we look at how British-Chinese parents support their children’s educational achievement. Our study suggests that the parents adopt similar strategies to those seen in British and North American parents, yet with some significant class nuances related to cultural divergence. This suggests that class influence is less rigorous than other analyses, being supplanted by cultural dispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In South Africa, prior to 1994, the racially defined geographical neighbourhood in which a child resided usually determined which school they could enrol in. Post 1994, this changed to legally allow enrolment in any public school. Unfortunately, due to the legacy of apartheid, in particular, resource allocation inequity, schools in African areas seldom offered quality education. Thus, African parents seeking quality public education for their children had to either opt for commuting or moving home, both options having financial implications. For the purposes of this study, quality education is defined using three variables: matriculation pass rates, learner-to-teacher ratios, and quintile rankings, even though use of these variables have their limitations. Almost two decades since the demise of apartheid, this study found that there is still a strong relationship between the old 'apartheid' geographical zoning, where the right to reside in an area was previously designated by race, and resourced schooling in the South African province of Gauteng. It also found a collinear relationship between resourced schools, teacher-to-learner ratios, school fees and matriculation pass rates. That is, schools ranked as quintile 4 and 5 schools, which have low teacher-to-learner ratios and charge more than R6 500 per year in school fees, generally produce high matriculation pass rates. There were some exceptions, with a few no-fee, quintile one schools, located in formerly African zoned areas, which also achieved high matriculation pass rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth and increasing popularity of ‘low-fee’ private schooling across many parts of India has attracted much research and policy attention. This paper broadens the discussion by drawing attention to the increasing heterogeneity of the educational landscape in many communities. Our specific focus is on the consequences for school choices made by households across rural and urban Andhra Pradesh. The paper draws on longitudinal data for two cohorts comprising approximately 3,000 children, collected as part of Young Lives research, together with a qualitative sub-study involving a purposively selected sample of Young Lives parents and children. Trends in school choice are discussed, as well as the factors that underlie the schooling decisions that households make as they navigate the complex school hierarchies within their communities. The paper offers new evidence of an increasing trend for households to make successive choices of school for their children, as household circumstances change and school options are re-evaluated. Household survey data from 2009 show that 16% of a sample of eight-year-olds had moved school at least once during the early grades of primary school, an increase from 5% of a comparable sample of eight-year-olds in 2002. The consequences of a dynamic and more market-driven school system are explored, and implications discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the policy feedback and political learning effects of school vouchers. Of particular interest is how market-based policies affect the likelihood that program participants will connect their experiences with the policy to the government. I examine parent survey data from an evaluation of the Milwaukee school voucher program. I find that voucher parents are more likely than public school parents to perceive that the government has influenced their child's schooling and to believe that their experiences with their child's school have taught them about how government works. Further, voucher parents report that their experiences with the policy have made them more politically active. While majorities of voucher and public school parents support increased public school expenditures, there is some evidence that school vouchers may decrease support for public schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the attitudes of Ohio homeowners about school choice, which includes open enrollment programs, school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and charter schools. Previous studies examine more limited forms of choice and investigate fewer possible influences. Overall we report at least five new findings and five findings that contradict previous studies. We find the strongest predictors of opposition for school choice are people having graduate degrees and living in high-performing public school districts. We find people living in blue collar areas and using private schools to be the strongest predictors of support. Males tend to oppose choice and African Americans support it. We find no role for income, the convenience of alternative schools, or the protection of house values in support for school choice. Overall we report at least five new findings and five findings that contradict previous studies. ( JEL H44, I22) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to inform public policies aimed at improving parental school-choice processes. The study estimates both the utility obtained by parents from different school attributes and the effective utility obtained with the actual school choice made by parents. The difference between both types of utilities provides a panorama on how market imperfections affect the general equilibrium of the education market. The results show that parents have different preference functions depending on their socioeconomic level. Nevertheless, regardless of the socioeconomic level, in all preference functions teacher performance remains highly significant. The findings suggest that even if parents would want the schools that serve their children to fulfill a series of academic criteria, they cannot use academic attributes when choosing a school for their children. This seems to be the result of either lack of information or because there is no quality alternative available to them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the influence of Stephen Ball’s work on research on markets and school choice in five European countries (Finland, France, Norway, Spain, and Sweden). The main focus is on the intellectual circulation of ideas, but the authors also take into account the relationship between ideas and social and political changes, as well as between ideas and the organization of research communities. Concepts derived from policy sociology are used to examine the dissemination of concepts and interpretations. Three areas of study are taken into account (school choice policies, choice as a class strategy, and choice within local education markets). The conclusion points out differences between countries and underlines the need to take into account processes of migration of ideas between national research communities in a more integrated European research area. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]