School Governance and Information: Does Choice Lead to Better-Informed Parents?

Autor/inn/en	Kisida, Brian; Wolf, Patrick J.
Institution	University of Arkansas, Education Working Paper Archive
Titel	School Governance and Information: Does Choice Lead to Better-Informed Parents?
Quelle	(2007), (22 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Monographie
Schlagwörter	Class Size; Democracy; School Choice; School Size; Governance; Scholarship Funds; Public Policy; Access to Information; Parent Participation; Democratic Values; Educational Vouchers; Comparative Analysis; Low Income Groups; Urban Schools; Private Schools; Public Schools; District of Columbia + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Klassengröße; Demokratie; Choice of school; Schulwahl; Education; Educational policy; Financing; Steuerung; Bildung; Erziehung; Bildungspolitik; Finanzierung; Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz; Öffentliche Ordnung; Elternmitwirkung; Educational voucher; Bildungsgutschein; Urban area; Urban areas; School; Schools; Stadtregion; Stadt; Schule; Private school; Privatschule; Public school; Öffentliche Schule
Abstract	Political theorists have long argued that the average citizen's lack of information and lack of clear policy preferences provide the rationale for public policy to be guided by experts and elites. Others counter that it is precisely the practice of deference to elites that perpetuates and even exacerbates the problem of apathetic and uninformed citizens. According to them, requiring citizens to take responsibility for political decisions and procedures motivates them to obtain the information and training necessary to become effective citizens. Here we look at school choice programs as an environment poised to provide insight into this debate. Theories of school choice suggest that parents need to and can make informed decisions that will tend to situate their students in appropriate schools. School choice, in a sense, brings elements of participatory democracy into the world of compulsory education, and thus brings the same potential benefits and problems that have long challenged democratic theorists. Increasing choices to parents may give them an incentive to raise their information levels about the schools their children attend. Akin to the information gathering of consumers in a marketplace, choice parents should have more reasons to gather more information about their schools than parents without options. Alternatively, a lack of any increase in information levels amongst school choosers would suggest that despite the increased incentives to gather information, having choices per se is not sufficient to overcome the costs of information gathering. To test whether the availability of school choice increases parent information about schools, we analyze data from the second year experimental evaluation of the Washington Scholarship Fund, a privately-funded partial-tuition voucher program. We find that presenting parents with choices does lead to higher levels of accurate school-based information on measures of important school characteristics. Specifically, parents in the school choice treatment group provided responses that more closely matched the school-reported data about school size and class size than did parents of control group members. Robustness Check Using Covariates in Ordered Logit is appended. (Contains 4 tables and 6 footnotes.) (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Education Working Paper Archive. Department of Education Reform, University of Arkansas, 201 Graduate Education Building, Fayetteville, AR 72701. Tel: 479-575-3172; Fax: 479-575-3196; e-mail: edreform@uark.edu; Web site: http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/EWPA
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10