| This study focuses upon the role family preferences play in determining enrollment. Varieties of numerical, theoretical, and empirical tools are employed during the course of the analysis. The results lend insight into the potential impact of commonly considered market-based educational reforms.; Preferences, ability, and opportunity are not homogenous across individuals or families. This heterogeneity leads to questions regarding the tradeoffs families are willing to make when deciding upon a school. A stylized model, calibrated to U.S. Census data, addresses this specific issue. Outcomes suggest an education market populated with heterogeneous families will segregate along lines of preference and ability leading to the possibility of selective, low quality schools able to mask poor provision with student ability.; A deeper theoretical treatment of the three most common market-based education reforms (privately funded vouchers, publicly funded vouchers, and open enrollment) further provides three predictions. One, private voucher policies may or may not improve public schools, but always lead to the best students leaving public schools for a private alternative. Two, publicly funded vouchers will lead to an increase in public school quality only if the program is of sufficient size and scope. Three, open enrollment policies lead to a segregation of public schools and will fail to improve their overall quality.; Empirical results suggest families value peer group as much as actual school quality. Further, families who seek to use vouchers are those whose students are already pre-disposed for educational success; and, of those, only the highest achieving students are accepted into the school of their choice. These findings, coupled with theoretical results suggest market-based reform initiatives such as public or privately funded vouchers will lead to a greater segregation of achievement and school quality along socio-economic lines and will generally fail to improve public school quality. |
