Making Poor Choices? Demand Rationalities and School Choice in a Chilean Local Education Market

ABSTRACT

Although the literature on school choice rationalities is extensive, different authors interpret the processes of school choice for poor families in different ways. Positions vary between those that consider that poor families have the same capacity to choose as middle class families and those that value structural factors as constraints for choice. The objective of this article is to identify different school choice rationalities of low income families in the context of a highly marketized education system such as Chile. Beyond the restrictions of a different nature that poor families face, this social group mostly expresses high levels of reflexivity and complex sets of preferences when it comes to choosing schools for their children. This article tries to overcome the dualistic division that prevails in school choice literature between choice as an outcome of utility maximization for all, and choice as a denial for deprived groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Chile
• education markets
• poverty
• school choice

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the two anonymous referees for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

^1. The research presented in this article has been supported by the projects Public-Private Partnerships in Educational Governance: An analysis of its dissemination, implementation animpact in a globalizing world (EDUPARTNER, Ref. GA-2012–322350, Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, European Commission) and Cuasi-mercados en educación en América Latina. Un análisis de su implementación e impacto sobre la desigualdad y la pobreza [Education quasi-markets in Latin America: An analysis of their implementation and impact on inequalities and poverty] (EDUMERCAL, Ref. CSO2011-22697, Spanish Government).

^2. Since 1993 (Law of Shared Financing) private subsidized schools are allowed to charge fees to families.

^3. Ley General de Educación [General Education Law] (Law 20370)

^4. The authors distinguish between the criteria expressed by parents (stated preferences) and the characteristics of the schools that they finally consider when enrolling their children (revealed preferences).

^5. Although some of the schools of the sample offered preschool education, the selection of families was based on the students of first grade of primary education to ensure the comparability between schools about the sample selected.

^6. Based on this sampling criterion the expected sample was of 65 interviews, therefore, the response rate was around 94%. It was not possible to interview four families due to scheduling problems but they were not characterized by any specific trait that could induce bias in the results obtained.

^7. The SEP (Preferential School Subsidy) system transfers funding (on top of the voucher) to those schools willing to enroll students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.