Educational Markets Need Better Information

Rory Hester writes about the challenges of getting good information to pick a school for his children in the Anchorage area. Ryan Boots piggybacks on this with some more general comments about why educational markets need better, comparable sources of information to help parents seach for schools.

Going back to my vouchers posts earlier this week: Voucher proponents say markets and parent choice will improve educational accountability. But they never really engage with the informational obstacles parents--even really smart, committed, educated parents--face to making good choices here. For educational markets to work effectively, all schools receiving public funds must be required to take the same test so that parents at least have comparable information about student performance (preferrably in both absolute and growth or value-added terms) across all school options.

Public entities should also do more to provide relevant information to parents in accessible, easy-to-use formats. Sites like schoolmatters.com and greatschools.net provide some test score and school environment information, but it's not always easy to use and there are often gaps. The best charter school authorizers provide good information about the performance and characteristics of schools they charter, but there are no comparable sources for district schools or schools chartered by other authorizers. I think this idea from the British think tank ippr for locality-wide "admissions authorities" has interesting potential for U.S. cities with significant, multi-sector publicly-funded school choice, as a way to provide parents with better information and smooth the logistics of choice across multiple sectors.