Presenting School Choice Information to Parents: An Evidence-Based Guide

Choosing a school for a child can be a rewarding but difficult task for parents. It is important that parents are presented with information that is understandable and user-friendly to help make an informed decision. However, there is little evidence-based guidance on how to present information about schools to the public. To address this gap, the U.S. Department of Education funded the creation of this evidence-based guide about how the presentation of information can affect parents’ understating, ease of use, and satisfaction with the information provided, and how it can affect how parents rank their school choices. The guide is based on the results of a rigorous experiment that tested the effect of differing the visual representation, amount, and organization of the information presented for a hypothetical school district.