What's in Your Portfolio? How Parents Rank Traditional Public, Private, and Charter Schools in Post-Katrina New Orleans’ Citywide System of School Choice

Abstract

We examine the characteristics of schools preferred by parents in New Orleans, Louisiana, where a “portfolio” of school choices is available. This tests the conditions under which school choice induces healthy competition between public and private schools through the threat of student exit. Using unique data from parent applications to as many as eight different schools (including traditional public, charter, and private schools), we find that many parents include a mix of public and private schools among their preferences, often ranking public schools alongside or even above private schools on a unified application. Parents who list both public and private schools show a preference for the private sector, all else equal, and are willing to accept lower school performance scores for private schools than otherwise equivalent public options. These parents reveal a stronger preference for academic outcomes than other parents and place less value on other school characteristics such as sports, arts, or extended hours. Public schools are more likely to be ranked with private schools and to be ranked higher as their academic performance scores increase.

Socially-Structured Mobility Networks and School Segregation Dynamics: The Role of Emergent Consideration Sets

“…Unfortunately, no such search data exist on a large scale for the school selection process. Moreover, because research shows that most parents rely heavily on word-of-mouth to gain information about select schools, those who rely only on publicly available websites for school information are likely to be new to the area or otherwise weakly embedded in the local social structure. One source of information that is sometimes available on a large scale are ranked-choice preferences in a unified enrollment system (Denice and Gross 2016; Glazerman and Dotter 2017; Harris and Larsen 2015; Lincove, Cowen, and Imbrogno 2018). Unfortunately, these datasets are only available for districts that operate with an open enrollment policy, which tend to be urban with large numbers of low-achieving schools and high proportions of poor and minority students.…”

“…One source of information that is sometimes available on a large scale are ranked-choice preferences in a unified enrollment system (Denice and Gross 2016; Glazerman and Dotter 2017; Harris and Larsen 2015; Lincove, Cowen, and Imbrogno 2018). Unfortunately, these datasets are only available for districts that operate with an open enrollment policy, which tend to be urban with large numbers of low-achieving schools and high proportions of poor and minority students.…”

Market Signals: Evidence on the Determinants and Consequences of School Choice From a Citywide Lottery

“…For charter schools, the values of each amenity variable are set to zero and a sector dummy is included. Sector is not the focus of this article, but other work has focused on sector in portfolio districts (Butler, Carr, Toma, & Zimmer, 2013; Lincove, Cowen, & Imbrogno, 2016). Other dummies are also included in the model, but not reported here because they do not have a useful policy interpretation.…”

Socioeconomic Status, Race, and Public Support for School Integration

“…In the next stage of the exercise we provided respondents with information about the likely impact of each of the two options on five factors important to families, including classmate characteristics, proximity to school, student learning, school test scores, and certainty of schooling assignments. Our choice of these factors was informed by the literature on parental schooling preferences, particularly the set of studies that work to identify the factors most salient to parents as they set out to select a school for their child (e.g., Denice & Gross 2016;Glazerman & Dotter 2017;Lincove et al, 2018;Schneider & Buckley, 2002. Table 1 summarizes the information we present to respondents on each of the five factors that would be affected by the two policies for assigning students to schools.…”