Comparing schools to help parents choose

Presenting School Choice Information to Parents: An Evidence-Based Guide, from the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), shares findings from an online experiment conducted with 3,500 low-income parents. Each parent was randomly assigned to see one of 72 different web pages displaying information for a hypothetical school district. The study tested how differences in the visual representation, amount, and organization of the information presented affected parents’ understanding, preferences, and choices.

Key findings include:

• Parents were most satisfied with school data showing graphs in addition to numbers, but displays using numbers only were most understandable. Research outside of education indicates that graphs and icons, such as color coded letter grades, can help people organize and interpret information. The study found parents preferred school information displays that included graphs but better understood the information without these additional visual representations.
• A higher amount of information was more satisfying to parents, with one exception. Parents were more satisfied with displays showing multiple indicators to describe schools’ distance from home, academics, safety, and resources than they were with displays showing just one indicator for each. Likewise, displays that added ratings from parent surveys were more satisfying. However, more information was not always better. For example, displays that added district averages—meant to provide context for each school’s profile—were actually less preferred.
• Parents chose higher performing schools when schools were ordered by academic quality but were most satisfied with displays that ordered schools by distance from home. The study compared displays that ordered schools from closest to farthest from home to those that ordered schools from highest to lowest academic quality. Parents both best understood and preferred schools ordered by distance from home. But when displays were ordered by academic quality, parents chose schools with higher academic quality.