Same difference: School choice and educational access in an urban district

School choice holds the prospect of vastly increasing the number of pathways that students can take through an educational system. This research looks at students\u27 school placements as the result of an interaction between individual and institutional decision making, both of which are potentially influenced by a student\u27s background and achievement, as well as by the students\u27 previous location in the school system. The focus of the study is the public high school choice process in Philadelphia, where students have more than 150 options to which they may apply. Each step in the choice process (application, acceptance, and enrollment) is examined. The research uses survey data from 1500 randomly-selected students and parents who participated in the Philadelphia Education Longitudinal Study (PELS) and school district records on students\u27 achievement and school choices and acceptances. While previous research has considered only individual-level influences on choice, these data indicate that school-level factors are powerful predictors of participating in the choice program, application to particular kinds of schools, acceptance, and ultimate enrollment. At various points in the process, school racial and socioeconomic composition, achievement level, grade structure, and the percent of peers making a particular choice have an impact. In addition, the over-representation of students with particular characteristics at certain categories of schools is sometimes the result of a larger proportion applying, while in other cases it results from a larger proportion being admitted or a combination of both. Though all students theoretically had a choice in this system, about 60% of the applicants actually were able to choose as a result of being accepted to one of the schools to which they applied. Of these, only a fraction had a good choice in the sense of being able to choose a high-achieving school. High-achieving students and white students were most likely to have any choice in the system, which responds to those families who are most able to leave. This research sets the school choice program in Philadelphia against the larger background of a city struggling to stem the drain of population and jobs to surrounding suburbs