Abstract: Each year, thousands graduate high school academically underprepared for college. Many must take remedial or developmental postsecondary coursework, and there is a growing debate about the effectiveness of such programs. This paper examines the effects of remediation using a unique data set of over 28,000 students. To account for selection biases, the paper implements an instrumental variables strategy based on variation in placement policies and the importance of proximity in college choice. The results suggest that students in remediation are more likely to persist in college in comparison to students with similar backgrounds who were not required to take the courses.

Abstract: The Boston mechanism is among the most popular school choice procedures in use. Yet, the mechanism has been criticized for its poor incentive and welfare performances, which led the Boston Public Schools to recently replace it with Gale and Shapley's deferred acceptance algorithm (henceforth, DA). The DA elicits truthful revelation of "ordinal" preferences whereas the Boston mechanism does not; but the latter induces participants to reveal their "cardinal" preferences (i.e., their relative preference intensities) whereas the former does not. We show that cardinal preferences matter more when families have similar ordinal preferences and schools have coarse priorities, two common features of many school choice environments. Specifically, when students have the same ordinal preferences and schools have no priorities, the Boston mechanism Pareto dominates the DA in ex ante welfare. The Boston mechanism may not harm but rather benefit participants who may not strategize well. In the presence of school priorities, the Boston mechanism also tends to facilitate a greater access than the DA to good schools by those lacking priorities at those schools. These results contrast with the standard view, and cautions against a hasty rejection of the Boston mechanism in favor of mechanisms such as the DA.

Abstract: Reformers suggest that parental choice will improve equity by making it possible for parents to select better schools for their children A key assumption behind this claim is that parents choose from a set of schools that range in quality Data from this longitudinal interview study suggest this assumption may be false In one Midwestern city, parents of different social class backgrounds did not consider schools of similar quality The set of schools considered by parents, called the choice set, differed; though parents' choice processes and reasoning were remarkably similar These data suggest that in addition to the well-documented constraints of income, information, and transportation, the resources used to construct choice sets may further constrain the schools parents consider These findings raise questions about the ability of current choice policies to deliver the equity outcomes reformers suggest

Abstract: This article argues that existing studies on cultural capital and educational success fail to distinguish the different channels through which cultural capital promotes educational success. Following Bourdieu, the article proposes that for cultural capital to promote educational success three conditions must hold: (1. parents must possess cultural capital, (2. they must transfer their cultural capital to children, and (3. children must absorb cultural capital and convert it into educational success. This research develops an empirical model that analyzes the significance of the three effects with respect to Danish children’s choice of secondary education. Denmark is well-suited for this study because access to secondary education is particularly meritocratic. The empirical analysis shows that all three channels through which cultural capital affects educational success are important.

Abstract: The literature on school choice assumes that families can submit a preference list over all the schools they want to be assigned to. However, in many real-life instances families are only allowed to submit a list containing a limited number of schools. Subjects' incentives are drastically affected, as more individuals manipulate their preferentes. Including a safety school in the constrained list explains most manipulations. Competitiveness across schools plays an important role. Constraining choices increases segregation and affects the stability and efficiency of the final allocation. Remarkably, the constraint reduces significantly the proportion of subjects playing a dominated strategy.

Abstract: Th e rationale for school choice is that providing autonomy, innovation, and accountability will allow schools of choice to operate more eff ectively vis-à-vis regular public schools. However, from existing research, we do not know that this is the case. Here, we review several social perspectives on choice: rational choice theory, institutional theory, social capital theory, and the social organization of schooling. Rational choice theory provides a rationale for many forms of school choice, although several researchers have questioned its underlying assumptions. An alternative theory is the institutional perspective, which predicts that school choice will not result in widespread innovation and diff erent school organizational forms. Social capital theory provides a lens to view how face-to-face social relationships among individuals and groups can promote certain goals and outcomes. Th e social organization of schooling perspective emphasizes how school structure and processes are related to student outcomes. We argue that there is a need for researchers to expand this latter perspective to examine what occurs inside the black box of schools of choice. By examining the social structure and processes within schools, classrooms, and families, we will further understand the conditions under which choice may (or may not) promote positive student outcomes. As the school choice movement gathers steam, so too does the research examining whether or not it is doing what it aims to do—that is, advance the educational opportunities for America’s students. It is interesting, however, that most of that research eff ort to date has neglected school structure and processes as they relate not only to student outcomes but the three key aspects of schools that the choice movement intends to improve—autonomy, innovation, and accountability (see Berends, Springer, & Walberg, 2008a; Bulkley & Fisler, 2003; Gill, Timpane, Ross, Brewer, & Booker, 2007; Lubienski, 2003). Central to advocates’ argument for choice is that these aspects of reform will produce changes in organizational conditions that promote learning, curriculum, and instruction, which, in turn, will lead to better student outcomes. Moreover, the argument goes, practices and conditions related to autonomy, innovation, and accountability will diff er across

Abstract: If we are to fully understand the demand side of school choice, we have to understand geography. But geography is not simply distance and commute time. It is also neighborhood and community. Using two conceptions of geography—space and place—I investigate how and when geography factored into parents’ thinking. Drawing on spatial analyses of parents’ choice sets, the schools within two miles of their homes, and longitudinal in‐depth interviews, I describe a range of ways in which geography shaped 36 parents’ choices of middle and high schools in Detroit. Parents considered a small fraction of the schools near their homes; however, all the parents discussed geographic characteristics of schools. The role geography played in the choice process ranged from nonexistent to framing. By investigating how parents’ geographic preferences played out with respect to their other preferences and the existing supply of schools, this study contributes to the field’s increasingly nuanced understanding of parents’ decision...

Abstract: Since Abdulkadiroglu and Sonmez’s [3] work, a concern on the mechanisms used to assign children to publicly funded schools endures. Among other school districts, Boston has concentrated a lot of attention. The formerly called Boston Mechanism (BM) that was applied since 2000 has been widely criticized. Finally in 2005, the Boston Public School authority decided to replace this mechanism with the so-called Deferred Acceptance (DA) algorithm. The present paper argues that replacing BM might not be recommendable in every case, hence providing rationale to its persistence in other municipalities such as Cambridge, MA, Denver and Minneapolis.

Abstract: This paper examines whether the recent growth in ‘low‐fee private’ (LFP) schools is able to promote Education for All by being accessible to the poor. Based primarily on a 13‐village survey of 250 households and visits to 26 private and government schools in rural Uttar Pradesh, India, this paper explores who ‘chooses’ private schooling, in the light of the well‐documented failure of the government school system. In particular, the paper explores the issue of whether private provision is affordable and accessible to poor rural parents. It finds that LFP school costs are unaffordable for over half of the sampled children, including the majority of low caste and Muslim families. It also finds that while LFPs are greatly preferred under current conditions, what parents actually want is a well‐functioning government school system.

Abstract: Connecticut’s interdistrict magnet schools offer a model of choice-based desegregation that appears to satisfy current legal constraints. This study presents evidence that interdistrict magnet scho...

Abstract: Recent evidence from Pakistan points to significant pro‐male bias within households in the allocation of education expenditures. This raises two important questions. Is less spent on enrolled girls than boys through differential school‐type choice for the two sexes; for example, through a greater likelihood of sending boys to fee‐charging private schools? And, if indeed this is the case, are girls thereby condemned to lower quality schooling, on average, than boys? By asking these questions, this paper makes three contributions to the literature. Firstly, this is one of a very few studies in Pakistan to explore the question of the relative effectiveness of public and private schools despite there being an unprecedented expansion of fee‐charging private schools in the past two decades. Secondly, unlike existing papers that focus on primary schooling, this study looks at potential learning gaps by school type for students in their last year of middle school (Grade Eight), very near their transition to secon...

Abstract: How do parents choose among schools when they are allowed to do so? In this paper, we analyze detailed information of 70,000 fourth-graders attending about 1,200 publicly subsidized schools in the context of the Chilean voucher system. We model the school choice of a household as a discrete choice of a single school, based on the random utility model developed by McFadden (1974) and the specification of Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes (1995), which includes choice specific unobservable characteristics and deals with potential endogeneity. Our results imply that households value some attributes of schools, with the two most important dimensions being test scores and distance to school. Interestingly, at the same time, our results suggest there is a lot of heterogeneity in preferences because the valuation of most school attributes depend on household characteristics. In particular, we find that while proximity to school is an inferior attribute, test scores is a normal attribute. We present evidence that our results are mainly driven by self-selection and not by school-side selection. As a final check, we compute the average enrollment elasticity with respect to all school attributes and find that higher elasticities are correlated with higher supply of the attribute, especially in the case of test scores-enrollment elasticities for private schools.

Abstract: Nationwide school choice and fixed per-student governmental funding provide incentives for Dutch schools to perform well. Roughly one third of Dutch pre-university schools are of catholic denomination. Acknowledging this widely available outside option to public and other schools, this paper considers the effect of catholic competition on non-catholic school performance in pre-university education. Employing data from central exit exams, a positive link between competition intensity and academic achievement is found. In addition to raising achievement, higher levels of competition are not associated with a deterioration of grading standards. Finally, (inverse) quantile regression estimates show no evidence of schools at the bottom of the achievement distribution being hurt by competition.

Abstract: Using student-level data from Durham, North Carolina, we examine the potential impact of school choice programs on the peer environments of students who remain in their geographically assigned schools. We examine whether the likelihood of opting out of one's geographically assigned school differs across groups and compare the actual peer composition in neighborhood schools to what the peer composition in those schools would be under a counterfactual scenario in which all students attend their geographically assigned schools. We find that many advantaged students have used school choice programs in Durham to opt out of assigned schools with concentrations of disadvantaged students and to attend schools with higher achieving students. Comparisons of actual peer compositions with the counterfactual scenario indicate only small differences in peer composition for nonchoosers on average. More substantial differences in peer environment emerge, however, for students in schools with concentrations of disadvantag...

Abstract: Home buyers exercise school choice when shopping for a private residence due to its location in a public school district or attendance area. In this quantitative study of one Connecticut suburban district, we measure the effect of elementary school test scores and racial composition on home buyers’ willingness to purchase single‐family homes over a 10‐year period, controlling for house and neighborhood characteristics. Overall, while both test scores and race explain home prices, we found that the influence of tests declined while race became nearly seven times more influential over our decade‐long period of study. Our interpretation of the results draws on the shifting context of school accountability, the Internet, and racial dynamics in this suburb over time.

Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to investigate how marketing tactics can enhance parents' loyalty in the educational context Building on extant research, it proposes an integrated framework in which perceived marketing tactics are related to school image, which in turn is related to parents' loyaltyDesign/methodology/approach – Five marketing tactics are selected A questionnaire is constructed, and data are collected from 1,200 parents of schoolchildren studying in 60 elementary schools in Taiwan A multiple regression analysis is conducted to analyze the dataFindings – The results show that the selected marketing tactics all significantly and meaningfully predicted the perception of school image, however promotion tactics were the most effective strategy In addition school image is an effective predictor of parents' behavior Finally school image mediates the relationship between marketing tactics and parents' loyaltyOriginality/value – The finding suggests that school administrators can use marketing ta

Abstract: The paper argues that access to public infrastructure plays a crucial role on the presence of private schools in a community, as it could not only minimise the cost of production, but also ensure a high return to private investment. Results using community, school and child/household-level PROBE survey data from five north Indian states provide some support to this central hypothesis: even after controlling for all other factors, access to village infrastructural facilities is associated with a higher likelihood of having a private school in the community. This is also corroborated by an analysis of household demand for private schools. The paper concludes by examining the effect of private school presence on year 5 pass rates: while all-school pass rates are significantly higher in villages with a private school, private school presence fails to have significant effect on local state school pass rates.

Abstract: Little attention has been paid to the role of peer social capital in the school context, especially as a predictor of adolescents’ academic outcomes. This study uses a nationally representative (N = 13,738, female = 51%), longitudinal sample and multilevel models to examine how peer networks impact educational achievement and attainment. Results reveal that, in addition to those factors typically associated with academic outcomes (e.g., school composition), two individual-level peer network measures, SES and heterogeneity, had significant effects. Although educational attainment was generally worse in low SES schools, for all ethnic groups higher attainment was associated with attending schools with higher concentrations of minority students. At the individual level, however, membership in integrated peer networks was negatively related to high school graduation for Asians, Latinos, and non-Hispanic whites, and to GPA for Asians and Latinos, as only African-American achievement increased in more racially/ethnically heterogeneous peer networks. Our results suggest that co-ethnic and co-racial peer friendship networks should not be viewed as obstacles to the educational accomplishments of today’s youth. In fact, in many cases the opposite was true, as results generally support the ethnic social capital hypothesis while providing little corroboration for oppositional culture theory. Results also suggest that co-racial and co-ethnic ties may mediate the negative effects of school choice, or more specifically of between-school socioeconomic segregation. Consequently, we conclude that school policies aimed at socioeconomic desegregation are likely to beneficially affect the academic outcomes of all race/ethnic groups.

Abstract: This article explores the extent to which participation in alternative human values education affects students' conceptions of agency amidst the economic and HIV/AIDS crises in Ndola, Zambia. Drawing on the concept of transformative agency as developed by critical research in education, this study examines conceptions of agency based on data produced through interviews, focus groups and diaries given to pairs of siblings from lower to middle income families one of whom attended a government secondary school in Ndola and the other an alternative school run by a non‐governmental organization. This study found that transformative agency was enabled by alternative schooling that attempted to disrupt the reproductive tendencies of state schooling. After graduation, however, students were forced to renegotiate their sense of agency vis‐a‐vis the larger structural constraints of Zambian society. As such, the limits and possibilities of alternative pedagogy and school structure towards educational equity are anal...

Abstract: The application of market principles to educational provision continues to attract governments across the globe, despite an international body of literature suggesting that marketisation can exacerbate inequalities. In light of a renewed policy push in Australia towards accountability via a market model, this paper analyses the impact of existing school choice policies in the state of Victoria, with particular reference to educational provision in an area of social disadvantage in Melbourne's north. This analysis challenges the claims of the now normalised market model, but also points to the need to expand research into this theme, which has attracted relatively little critical attention in Australia. I argue that both the operation of existing policies and the direction of new proposals imply an uneven system of accountability which applies different standards to increasingly polarised ‘closed’ and ‘open’ schooling sectors.

Abstract: School choice is most often viewed through the lens of provision: most of the debate on the issue searches for desirable ways to offer vouchers, scholarships or other tools that provides choice as a way to achieve equality and/or freedom. This paper focuses on the consumer side of school choice, and utilises behavioural economics as well as ethnographic and network studies to consider ways to structure choice which respond to actual cognitive and social processes of choice. These empirical studies give scholars and policy-makers who grapple with school choice a perspective that should affect the principled design of these programs as well as their execution. The paper considers the ways in which actual choice processes should affect current visions of school choice. It concludes with recommendations concerning the design of choice sets and the accessibility of information regarding choice, which together can assist school choice policies in better fulfilling their promise of equality and freedom.

Abstract: In Spain as in other European countries, policies on school choice have been implemented in tandem with the channelling of public resources into private education. Given the application of public money to private schooling, the primary objective of this paper is to analyse the extent to which Spanish families enjoy equality in their ability to exercise school choice. To do so, the analysis focuses on the factors that affect school choice in Spain using data from the 2003 and 2006 PISA evaluations. Specifically, the influence of personal, family, geographic, motivational and educational policy factors are all considered in the context of deciding whether to attend a public or private school. The results reveal a broad similarity across the factors driving the selection of private schools which either receive some public funding (known as ‘concerted’) or independent, showing a greater proportion of families from better socioeconomic, educational and cultural backgrounds in these types of schools. In additio...

Abstract: School choice has lately risen to the top of the list of potential solutions to America's educational problems, particularly for the poor and the most disadvantaged members of society. Indeed, in the last few years several states have held referendums on the use of vouchers in private and parochial schools, and more recently, the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of a scholarship program that uses vouchers issued to parents. While there has been much debate over the empirical and methodological aspects of school choice policies, discussions related to the effects such policies may have on the nation's moral economy and civil society have been few and far between. School Choice, a collection of essays by leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, and theologians, redresses this situation by addressing the moral and normative side of school choice. The twelve essays, commissioned for a conference on school choice that took place at Boston College in 2001, are organized into four sections that consider the relationship of school choice to equality, moral pluralism, institutional ecology, and constitutionality. Each section consists of three essays followed by a critical response. The contributors are Patrick McKinley Brennan, Charles L. Glenn, Amy Gutmann, David Hollenbach, S. J., Meira Levinson, Sanford Levinson, Stephen Macedo, John T. McGreevy, Martha Minow, Richard J. Mouw, Joseph O'Keefe, S. J., Michael J. Perry, Nancy L. Rosenblum, Rosemary C. Salomone, Joseph P. Viteritti, Paul J. Weithman, and Alan Wolfe.