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More Than Constraints: How Low Socio-Economic Parents Make Judgments Concerning Their Children's Schooling, Michelle Heather Lucier

Theses and Dissertations

As school choice opportunities have become more prevalent and information about schools more readily available, there is still a lack of understanding of how parents use information to evaluate schools. The discussion around school judgment-making predominately focuses on whether parents know about school choice and the constraints parents face which limit choice, but I investigate, using 91 interviews of parents living in a low socio-economic community, how parents make judgments and evaluate schools past the discussion of what schools are available to parents and the constraints those parents face. The results of this study are that parents use heuristics—specifically familiarity, …