ABSTRACT

Research has documented the complexity of parent decision-making within school choice marketplaces, including the ways in which individual preferences, social networks, and geography influence where parents choose to enroll their children in school. Yet, parent choices are constrained by the ways in which these dynamics intersect with existing school characteristics and locations. By constructing unique choice set ‘landscapes’ for 194 Detroit neighborhoods, taking into account where current neighbors attend school in the city, this paper contributes new evidence on the influence of peer enrollment on school choosing, and how peer choice sets differ from students’ nearest schools. We find that parents are responsive to lower quality schools in their choice sets when choosing to exit and that choice set quality varies by race, with Black students having lower quality schools in their Detroit choice sets.

摘要

研究记录了在择校市场中家长决策的复杂性，包括个人偏好、社交网络和地理因素如何影响家长选择让孩子入学的方式。然而，家长的选择受到这些动态与现有学校特征和位置相交的方式的限制。通过为 194 个底特律社区构建独特的选择集“景观”，考虑到当前邻居在该市上学的地点，本文为同伴入学对学校选择的影响以及同伴选择集与学生最近的学校选择有何不同提供了新证据学校。我们发现，父母在选择退出时会对他们选择中质量较低的学校做出反应，并且选择集的质量因种族而异，