Parental School Choice Research Articles

How Saudi parents rationalize the choice of school for their children

In societies where education holds high significance and parental ambitions for their children’s academic achievements are profound, understanding the rationale behind parental school choice becomes crucial. This study aims to explore the question: Are Saudi parents rational in selecting their children’s schools? Through an in-depth analysis of preferences and decision-making factors, this research endeavors to shed light on the intricate dynamics influencing parental school choice within the Saudi Arabian context. To achieve this objective, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Saudi parents whose children were enrolled in private schools (K-12). The findings indicate that cultural or religious identity emerged as a predominant factor, encompassing elements such as gender segregation in schools, parental preference for English over Arabic language learning, and the emphasis on Islamic religious education. Additionally, accessibility factors such as the physical location of the school and school fees emerged as significant determinants of parental preferences for their children’s schools. Wellbeing emerged as a crucial factor in parental decision-making. Furthermore, certain academic considerations emerged as a primary influencing factor in Saudi parents’ school selection. These considerations included skills development, school pedagogy, school staff quality, and learning outcomes.

Research Design with Weighted Lotteries in School Choice

Centralized admissions are an integral part of parental school choice programs. Most districts use a version of the deferred acceptance algorithm to assign applicants to schools. Centralized admissions produce data with quasi-experimental variation in student assignment that is integral in program evaluation. Recent developments in research design consider the basic version of the deferred acceptance algorithm. However, most districts adapt advanced versions of the deferred acceptance algorithm to implement their diversity policy in admissions, such as favoring applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds in lottery tie-breaking. We develop research design for data from the deferred acceptance algorithm with weighted lotteries.

A Quiet Revolution: Putting Parental Choice to Work for Social Justice

ABSTRACT AI offer first-hand account of a key stage in the development of parental choice in American public schooling, when Massachusetts state officials, concerned not to repeat the trauma and disruption resulting from mandatory reassignment of students to achieve desegregation in Boston, persuaded and helped more than a dozen other cities to adopt plans based upon guided parental choice. By 1993 over 200,000 students (25% of the state’s public school enrollment) were attending schools in communities relying on parental choice to address the isolation of minority students; most of these had abandoned residence-based assignments altogether. This account describes the means by which this was achieved. This essay does not discuss charter schools, vouchers, tuition tax credits, faith-based schools or educational savings accounts; those came in the future. It is reasonable to believe, however, that the widespread and successful adoption of parental choice of local public schools in Massachusetts helped to prepare the way for such further developments nationwide.

Navigating Educational and Urban Landscapes: Middle-Class School Choice Strategies in Local Education Markets

ABSTRACT The middle-classes use school choice as a strategy of class reproduction and comparative advantage. In this article, we show how middle-class parental school choice strategies are spatially dependent and how schooling preferences and final choices are bounded by the social and educational characteristics of the local education market of their neighborhood of residence in the city of Barcelona. Our findings reveal interesting differences relating to the search process and final decisions, which are dependent on parental preferences and risk perception in the different local education markets. Reflections on some policy implications of the analysis are considered in the conclusions.

Positioning for Success: An Analysis of Marketing Strategies used by Private Schools in Coimbatore, India

The marketing techniques used by private schools in Coimbatore, India, are examined in this study. Private schools are using more marketing strategies to draw students as the focus on parental choice in education grows. The study looks at the particular components of the marketing mix that these schools use, such as place (distribution channels, school location), pricing (fee structure, scholarships), and product (curriculum, facilities) and promotion (advertising, open houses). The effectiveness of these tactics in influencing parental choice of school and decision-making is examined in this study. A combination of surveys, interviews, and focus groups with parents, school administrators, and marketing staff will probably be used in the study process. The results will help to clarify the competitive marketing environment of Coimbatore’s private education sector and offer insightful guidance to school directors looking to maximize their marketing expenditures.

DETERMINANTS OF PARENTAL SCHOOL CHOICE: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The study examined determinants of parental school choice internationally aiming to identify research gaps and providing suggestions for researchers. Articles published between 2000 and 2023 were searched from 9 databases and a total of 30 articles were included in the review. The result showed that parental school choice is critically affected by parent-related factors like parents’ education, income, family size, and education level of the children, and the school-related factors: quality of education, performance of teachers, school facilities, school cost, parent-teacher relationship, and school curriculums are the major ones. The safety/security related and children’s educational achievement is found slightly affecting factor on parental school choice. The research design of reviewed articles is found descriptive research although the explanatory research design was appropriate as it supports better. The study also identified factors for developing and developed countries are different. For developing countries socio-economy, income, family education, cost, curriculum, technology, proximity to home, number of children, and age of the child are the major ones. For developed countries: school quality, teacher performance, special programs, playground, training teachers, library service, student moral development, school performance, environment, school ranking, interaction with parents, discipline, curriculum structure, knowledge, result, and communication skills are paid attention for parental school choice decisions.

Parental school choice and involvement in bilingual early childhood education

The present paper explores parental involvement from the parents’ perspective concerning a specific area – bilingual early childhood education. It aims to uncover the level, extent, and quality of involvement in children’s education of those parents who choose bilingual early years programs for their children. Data is collected via questionnaires and interviews. The research results on parental school choice are reflected in the Hungarian sample, but new aspects are also emerging. Results show that the (upper-)middle-class parents in the sample, who choose the bilingual program for an additional fee, have a solid positive sense of efficacy in their parental role. Their school choice reflects their parental views looking for a municipality-run institution of set boundaries with innovative pedagogical methods and inclusive attitude. Out of the four motives of parental involvement defined by Kernan (2012), three are mentioned in the interviews: the harmonization of pedagogical values, the practical help of parents supporting the organization, and the enablement by building mutual relationships between parents and practitioners. The democratic motif does not appear in the data, meaning shared decision-making practices are not present in the institutions.

"The kids get haggled over": how institutional practices contribute to segregation in elementary schools.

School segregation is a key topic in urban, educational and inequality research. While previous studies have mainly focused on the effects of both parental school choice and residential segregation patterns on the composition of schools, we draw attention to institutional players steering access to elementary schools as one important dimension of institutional discrimination. Combining expert interviews with school principals and the local schools department with a quantitative survey among parents, we scrutinize the interplay between institutional structures and practices and parental school choice strategies. We identify three dimensions of institutional discrimination as being particularly relevant for school access, and thus for school segregation and inequality: a school's guidelines and strategic objectives in dealing with segregation, the enrollment process, and a school's profiling and information policies. These factors prove to be rather subtle, yet crucial facets of institutional discrimination, co-producing and perpetuating spatial inequalities.

Do school preferences differ between mothers and fathers? International evidence from PISA

ABSTRACT A sizeable literature – spanning education, sociology and economics – has investigated the issue of parental school preferences and school choice. A notable gap in the existing evidence base is an exploration of how such preferences differ between mothers and fathers. We present new cross-national findings on this matter, drawing on survey data collected from more than 300,000 parents across 25 countries. Our findings suggest that mothers rate the school environment – whether the school is safe and has a pleasant atmosphere – to be more important than fathers. Differences are also observed with respect to the school’s reputation and whether it has a high level of achievement. Clearer evidence of such differences emerges for industrialised Western nations than for countries that are not members of the OECD. In most countries, mothers’ and fathers’ preferences do not vary substantially between sons and daughters.

Examining the Relationship between Learning Context, School Choice, and Academic Performance: A Study of Government-Assisted Adventist Secondary Schools in the Ashanti, Ghana

This study aimed at examining the association between the learning context, school choice, and academic performance. An Embedded Mixed Methods design was applied within the framework of the pragmatic research paradigm. The target population consisted of 5 Government-Assisted Adventist secondary schools in the Ashanti Region, Ghana, with 27,388 students and stakeholders. The study involved a sample of 396; 200 students and 196 stakeholders (management and teachers, old students, pastors, church members, and parents). Sampling strategies included simple random, stratified random, purposive, and snowball due to the diversity of the respondents. The data were analysed using ANOVA, Correlation, Crosstabulation, and documentary techniques. The findings indicated a significant difference between Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE) and West Africa Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) performance with p-values of .016 and .000, respectively, P<.05 at a 95% Confidence Interval. There was a significant correlation between the learning context standard and parental school choice. The results showed that schools with low-standard learning contexts mainly attract average and low-performing applicants. The study suggests enhancing the learning context standards of less-endowed secondary schools to boost their competitiveness. Policymakers are urged to incorporate diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment approaches in evaluating secondary schools, taking into account their learning context to ensure fairness, reliability, and equity.

Parental Occupation, Social Class, and School Choice in Southern Philippines: Their Implications to Educational Public-Private Partnership vis-à-vis the K-12 SHS Voucher Program

This study explores the education inequality brought about by senior high school (SHS) choice of families in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, Philippines, considering a nonmonetary approach to social class based on parental occupation. Furthermore, it underscores implications for educational public-private partnership (EPPP) regarding the K-12 SHS Voucher Program in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). We used the explanatory sequential mixed methods research design, wherein quantitative research is complemented by qualitative research. A survey of family education, parental (breadwinner) occupation, and SHS school choice was conducted among Grade 12 public, private, and charter schools students. Data analysis considered social status, power of school choice, and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) government. Results showed more SHS participation from the middle class. Although the charter SHS entails social cohesion, overall findings suggest student segregation in the municipality, considering the public and private SHSs student compositions. As such, there is education inefficiency and inequity, revealing EPPP inefficiency. Based on document analysis, a complementary method, these education inequality issues are attributed to the partial implementation of ARMM regional autonomy posing constraints to government service delivery and compounding poverty. Therefore, government support and regional mechanisms to strengthen capability and accountability are recommended to enhance the state capacity and service delivery in BARMM, Philippines.

Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic

BackgroundCOVID-19 drastically changed the school choice landscape as families considered schools with varying public health protocols as well as academic and demographic characteristics. Our understanding of families’ preferences during the pandemic is limited, however, because it primarily derives from surveys asking parents about a single school characteristic. ObjectiveWe aimed to understand how families' preferences for schools’ racial composition and public health policies may interdepend. MethodsWe conducted an original school choice survey experiment with U.S. White parents in August 2021. Parents indicated their willingness to enroll their student in hypothetical schools with experimentally randomized school quality ratings, racial and socioeconomic demographics, and COVID mitigation strategies (i.e. instructional modalities, mask and vaccination mandates). ResultsWe find novel causal evidence that White parents' preferences for schools’ racial demographics and public health policies are interdependent. Among otherwise similar schools, parents expressed stronger preferences to avoid Black, Latinx, and Asian schools when there were fewer COVID mitigation policies. Relatedly, parents required more stringent COVID protocols for their children to attend predominantly Black, Latinx, and Asian schools while showing no preferences for COVID policies among predominantly White schools. The interdependence of preferred racial demographics and public health polices was amplified among White parents who held stigmatizing beliefs about Asian populations carrying the COVID virus and pro-White sentiments. Although Democrats expressed stronger preferences for schools with more COVID mitigation strategies than Republicans, for White parents across the political spectrum school racial composition and COVID mitigation preferences interdepended. ConclusionsThis study suggests families may leverage flexible student assignment policies and schools of choice to enroll in or avoid schools based on both preferred public health policies and racial demographics. Districts should consider how adopting strong public health policies during infectious disease outbreaks may help mitigate hardened racial avoidance and school racial segregation.

Parental Involvement and School Choice in Hungarian Primary Schools

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine the features of school choice by comparing parental involvement between denominational and public schools. In Hungary, denominational schools reemerged after the fall of communism in 1989, and their share increased further after 2010. The survey data, we employ, refer to primary school children’s parents and were focused on parental involvement at home and at school. Our hypothesis is based on the work of Epstein and Coleman and suggests a prominent role for denominational schools in parental involvement. However, our results show that Hungarian denominational schools differ in terms of parental involvement and school choice from what theory or practice in other western countries suggests. School choice of Hungarian parents is primarily driven by the intention to ensure a more culturally and economically homogeneous and safer environment for their children. Parental involvement tends to be stronger at home and at school due to higher parental religiosity, regardless of the school sector. The novelty of our findings is, that opposite to the literature, mostly not the school type but parents’ religiosity increase both the home based and the school based parental involvement.

Nexus between Branding of Education and Parental School Choice: Evidence from Islamabad, Pakistan

The educational system in Pakistan is in a dismal position ever since it was established. The government sector has lost credibility with the public and is no longer the first option for parents due to inadequate, consistent, and effective policies and basic infrastructure. Parents are actively choosing the private sector schools for their children. Since denationalization during late 1970s, the private sector has grown steadily. It has expanded during past two decades, establishing new standards for outstanding education, but concerns about the rising class divide affecting social equality have also arisen. The existing literature supports private schools' growing role in expanding enrollment and resolving quality and access issues, but little is stated about their influence on society. Private schools are subtly attacking social justice and equality by increasing the social stratification and widening the socioeconomic difference. Private schools' branding techniques influence parents' choosing a junior and a high school for their children. Most of the research in this field has focused on exploring how the problems of quality, access, and other variables influence students' decisions about which schools to attend. However this research is aimed at exploring on a very basic issue: why are private schools favored because of their "branding"—the branding that has strengthened the status awareness in parents and school choice that has joined the realm of class conflict with several dimensions. The state's obligation to deliver at certain level of essential services has been privatized and sold out in the open market. The middle class's preference is migrating from public to private schools, with the goal of purchasing financial stability in order to gain access to a better-paying jobs and social circles. Today, schooling is not more than just getting an education; it's also a way to show wealth and social standing.

Which child to which school? How local politicians shape catchment areas, school choice and diversity

Growing global debates surrounding parental school choice underscore the relevance of school place allocation. While there is much research on school choice, the enactment of such allocation policy is rarely analysed. Responding to this research gap, this article investigates how local politicians in Berlin put public primary school place allocation into practice. Building on approaches of policy enactment and policy field analysis, this article examines the ‘doing’ of Berlin primary school place allocation with the concurrency of catchment areas and parental school choice. Methodologically, this article draws on semi-structured interviews with three inner-city district school department heads in Berlin. Using qualitative content analysis, their political objectives, scope and strategies are analysed. The findings demonstrate that local politicians can interpret the allocation process in line with their political objectives. Consequently, there is surprising variation between the districts’ enactment of primary school place allocation policy. Policymakers’ political preferences for either school choice or social diversity are influential, as is the local context (e.g. school place shortages). The study highlights the importance of local actors and identifies three political strategies used to influence school place allocation, which might inform local politicians’ strategies elsewhere.

Parental kindergarten school choice in Addis Ababa: The policy implications

The purpose of this study was to find out whether parents sending their children to community-based, faith-based, and privately owned kindergartens significantly differ in their perception about the determinants of Kindergarten (KG) school choice. Empirical data were collected through a three-scale closed-ended questionnaire items from 118 parents – selected through stratified proportional sampling from six sample KG schools. The data for each item were inserted into a 3 × 3 contingency table and analyzed by employing descriptive statistics and chi-square (x2) test. Findings of this study showed that parents of the three school type did not significantly differ in their perception on some school choice parameters like: school proximity, childcare and safety, and teachers’ competence and ethics. On the other hand, playgrounds and instructional materials, foreign language instruction, moral/religious instruction, and school transportation service were found as high priorities in school choice for parents of private KG children. Similarly, moral/religious instruction, and playgrounds and instructional materials were high priorities for faith-based KG parents. School provision of free lunch and school fee appeared as the priorities in making school choice for community-based KG parents. These findings do have significant implications in designing policy responses to the varied parental preferences and expectations of KG schooling. The findings also hinted the need for regulating and setting minimum standards for all KG education providers in urban Ethiopia. However, further research is needed to more understand the issue involving wider samples, other related variables, and using qualitative data as well.

Meddling with school choice: comparing education policy interventions and their impact on school segregation

ABSTRACT While several studies have investigated the role of parental school choice in exacerbating school segregation, less attention has been paid to the role of institutional contexts and specific educational policies and regulations. However, since the institutional context sets the framework for both school autonomy regarding the admission process and the actual extent of school choice, it has a significant effect on parents’ choices. By comparing two educational contexts that have undergone opposite policy interventions regarding the role of parental choice in school allocation – Mülheim, Germany and Amsterdam, the Netherlands – we confirm the idea that expanding parental choice increases segregation levels. However we also suggest that the relationship between education policies and segregation patterns is very complex and dependent on the interactions of various aspects lying within and outside the education system. Both cases reveal that competition between schools and theirdiscretionary scope in admitting pupils also plays a key part.

Understanding Parental School Choice in Varied Socio-economic Milieus: A Case Study of a Village in Punjab

With the upsurge of private schools, parents are struggling with a variety of schooling options. Given the exclusionary nature of privatisation, the market has led to the reproduction of social inequality amidst a plurality of choice. By mapping the school choice process, the article aims to explore school choice in the varied socio-economic milieu in a village in Punjab. Based on the qualitative data collected with the help of semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs), the study draws linkages between the determinants of school choice and the positionality of parents. The findings of the study dissect the simple yet complex process of school choice along common factors, that is, teachers, quality of education, learning environment, English education and private tutoring. Drawing upon the nuanced analysis of these factors with parental socio-economic background, the study argues that it is important to understand the varied expectations, aspirations and challenges of parents from diverse sections to comprehend the school choice process.

Neighborhood, Segregation, and School Choice

Over the past few decades, school choice has been a widely debated issue around the globe, following the development of pluralism, liberty, and democracy. In many countries, school choice systems were preceded by residence-based school assignment systems, creating a strong connection between a neighborhood and its schools’ demographic compositions. However, schools often remain highly segregated. School segregation is thus seen as a major problem and is supposedly driven by three main factors: residential segregation, parental school choice, and schools’ selection of pupils. This paper aims to shed light on what research should be focusing on as regards school choice and residential segregation with the following two research questions: What are the links between neighborhood and school choice in the literature? How are neighborhood and school choice connected to school segregation in the literature? Two main findings emerged: (1) the neighborhood-based social networks that parents developed had limited their school choices and (2) neighborhood segregation is one of the most important factors that contributes to school segregation and is related to multi-ethnic and socioeconomic contexts.

Factors Affecting Parental Choice of Private and Public Schools in Dhading

This study explores the factors which attract parents to prefer public or private schools. The data were collected from six secondary schools of Dhading district. From each school, three parents were selected by using non-random sampling method. The eighteen parents were given a questionnaire. The collected questionnaire was analyzed and interpreted descriptively. A comparison of results was undertaken to explore the identified factors related to the Quality of Instruction; Class Size; Teacher-Student Relationship; Parent-School Relationship; School Facilities and Environment for learning. It was found that Class Size was the strongest factor that parents had a higher agreement on this variable. The second strong factor was favorable environment for their children and the final influencing factor of parental choice was identified as School Facilities.