Journal Articles

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

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Political theorists have long argued that low information levels among average citizens provide the rationale for public policy to be guided by experts and elites. Other scholars counter that deference to elites perpetuates and even exacerbates the problem. Here we look at school choice programs as an environment to elucidate this important debate. Theories of school choice suggest that parents need to and can make informed decisions. Choice parents should have more incentives to gather information about their child’s schools than parents without schooling options. Alternatively, a lack of any increase in information levels among school choosers would suggest that having choices per se is not sufficient motivation to overcome the costs of information gathering. Analyzing data from an experimental evaluation of the Washington Scholarship Fund, we find that presenting parents with choices does lead to significantly higher levels of accurate information on measures of important school characteristics.

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Detail Information

Series Title

American Politics Research

Call Number

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Publisher

: sage publisher., 2010

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

1532673x

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Vol. 38 no. 5, September 2010.pp. 783-805

Subject(s)

School choice
School governance
School characteristics
Political information
Political efficacy

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