Does Participation in a School Choice Program Impact Student Achievement and Attendance?

Quantitative statistical methods are used to address two research questions about the connection between participation in a school choice program and students\u27 attendance and achievement. These questions are of interest to large urban districts which use expensive school choice plans to desegregate on racial and ethnic or on socioeconomic descriptors of students, in the hope that the resulting voluntary desegregation will benefit student attendance and then achievement. Participants in the kindergarten Schools of Choice plan in the Rochester City School District in the second year of the plan\u27 s implementation, who used the plan to choose a school away from their neighborhood school, did not experience improved attendance or academic performance over students who used the plan to choose their neighborhood school