School Choice and Parents’ Preferences for School Attributes in Chile

Abstract

A key assumption of school choice and competition policies is that parents’ most important priority when choosing a school (if not the only one), is the quality of the school. However, evidence about the school’s attributes that in reality drive parents’ school choosing is still scarce. We use census data from a parents’ survey in Chile, a country with a national school choice and competition system, to describe the most common attributes that parents consider when choosing a school and assess how the probability of prioritizing those attributes varies by parents’ socioeconomic characteristics, while controlling for other characteristics of the family. We find that parents prioritize school’s proximity, quality and whether the school provides religious education when choosing a school. Furthermore, the probability that parents prioritize proximity is larger for parents of low-socioeconomic status, while the probability of prioritizing quality and religious education is larger for parents with high socioeconomic status. These findings show that only advantaged families make decisions regarding schools based on their quality, and therefore, school choice and competition policies might have a limited benefit for disadvantaged students, possibly maintaining or reinforcing socioeconomic segregation in the education system.