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Does Choice Matter For School Choice? An Instrumental Variables Analysis Of The Effect Of Choice On Parental Satisfaction In Charter Schools, Corey A. Deangelis

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

I employ ordered probit regression, and a new instrumental variable, to compare the fall 2015 parental satisfaction survey results of open-enrollment charters to district-conversion charters. The results indicate that choice status in Arkansas charter schools is significantly beneficial to parental-satisfaction. In particular, after controlling for student and parent-level characteristics, parents with children in open-enrollment charters had between a 17-percentage point and 32-percentage point higher likelihood of grading their current school as an A or responding as Highly Satisfied in six of the quality categories: Overall, Teacher, Discipline, Learning, Safety and Parental-Involvement. Four of the relationships remain large and statistically-significant in …