Parental Preference Heterogeneity in School Choice
Public school choice programs assume parents uniformly prioritize academic quality, but differences in preferences based on socioeconomic status and race affect school selection. Understanding these preference variations is essential to predicting the equity and efficiency of market-based educational reforms.
Picture this
Selecting a school under a choice plan resembles choosing a house where buyers weigh multiple features like price, location, and neighborhood amenities. Higher-income families prioritize school academic test scores, whereas lower-income or minority families often weigh academic ratings against proximity or social composition.
What the evidence says
Mean preference for school test scores ranges from 1.461 to 2.714 among non-lunch recipients compared to 0.102 to 1.444 for lunch recipients. A 1 standard deviation increase in school test score increases choice odds by 331% for white non-lunch elementary families. African American parents face a tradeoff where choosing high-scoring schools requires sacrificing preferences for majority same-race schools, preferring 80% black over 35% black schools by 10% to 70%.
- Who
- N = 36,887 human students entering grades 4–8 in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.
- How
- Exploded-mixed-logit demand estimation using multiple-ranked choice forms submitted by parents in 2002.
What to do
Incorporate random coefficients and demographic interaction terms in discrete choice models to measure preference heterogeneity across consumer subgroups.
From the source
"We estimate an exploded-mixed-logit model of demand for schools and find that higher-SES parents are more likely to choose higher-performing schools, while minority families must trade off preferences for high-performing schools against preferences for a predominantly minority school."
Heterogeneous Preferences and the Efficacy of Public School Choice