Giving Compass' Take:

• This Education Next post examines school information displays (also known as school finders or shopping websites), and how the design of each one can influence school choices.

• What role might funders in the education sector play in making sure the design of these websites are done with care? How do low-income families consume school information?

• Here's why school choice hinges on quality, access and equity.

Increasingly, families have a choice of schools instead of just one default neighborhood school. Especially in cities, the number of available choices is often large. For school choice to be good public policy, choosers — typically parents — must be well informed.

One way that consumers in the education market become informed is through online displays of school choice information, sometimes referred to as school shopping websites or school finders. These websites contain profiles of individual schools. While the content and presentation varies across sites, these profiles typically contain information about topics such as academic performance, program offerings, and student demographics. Some cities, like Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, and New Orleans, have integrated these school shopping websites with the cities’ online common application portals, meaning that parents have the profiles at their fingertips as they submit school requests. What they see in those profiles could directly affect which schools they select and where their children ultimately enroll ...

Even seemingly mundane decisions about the design of these sites can shape which schools parents consider and what they learn about each school. These decisions produce the “choice architecture” in which parents make school decisions for their children.

Read the full article about how school information displays can impact school choices by Steve Glazerman, Ira Nichols-Barrer and Jon Valant at Education Next.