Preferences, Information, and Parental Choice Behavior in Public School Choice

Working Paper No. 12995 The incentives and outcomes generated by public school choice depend to a large degree on parents' choice behavior. There is growing empirical evidence that low-income parents place lower weights on academics when choosing schools, but there is little evidence as to why....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NBER Working Paper Series 2007-03, p.12995
Main Authors: Hastings, Justine S, vanWeelden, Richard, Weinstein, Jeffrey
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Decision making
Economic theory
Education
Elementary schools
Experiments
Households
Low income groups
No Child Left Behind Act 2001-US
Parents & parenting
Preferences
Public schools
School choice
School districts
Siblings
Students
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Summary:Working Paper No. 12995 The incentives and outcomes generated by public school choice depend to a large degree on parents' choice behavior. There is growing empirical evidence that low-income parents place lower weights on academics when choosing schools, but there is little evidence as to why. We use a field experiment in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public School district (CMS) to examine the degree to which information costs impact parental choices and their revealed preferences for academic achievement. We provided simplified information sheets on school average test scores or test scores coupled with estimated odds of admission to students in randomly selected schools along with their CMS school choice forms. We find that receiving simplified information leads to a significant increase in the average test score of the school chosen. This increase is equivalent to a doubling in the implicit preference for academic performance in a random utility model of school choice. Receiving information on odds of admission further increases the effect of simplified test score information on preferences for test scores among low-income families, but dampens the effect among higher-income families. Using within-family changes in choice behavior, we provide evidence that the estimated impact of simplified information is more consistent with lowered information costs than with suggestion or saliency.
ISSN:0898-2937
DOI:10.3386/w12995