An Analysis of Parental Preferences and Search Behavior

1 by the National Science Foundation. I would like to thank all of the parents that responded to our survey. I would also like to acknowledge the research assistants who helped gather and coordinate information: Magdalena Guerrero, Paula Pacheco and Felipe Salazar. Abstract: Skeptics of school choice are concerned that parents, especially low-income parents, will not choose schools based on sound academic reasoning. Many fear that, given a choice, parents will sort themselves into different schools along class lines. Most surveys find that parents of all socioeconomic groups cite academic aspects as important when choosing a school. Moreover, almost no parents refer to the social composition of the student body. These results may not be reliable since they are simply responses to survey items rather than actual behavior. We monitor the actual behavior of parents in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile, by examining how they construct their school choice sets. By observing the search behavior of parents, we are able to go beyond the survey data where parents are likely to mention socially acceptable school preferences. The data indicates that parents ’ decisions are influenced by demographics rather than academic performance. Based on this evidence, we argue that unfettered choice may reduce the pressure on schools to improve their performance and could potentially lead to more stratified schools