Study: Promoting growth data may improve school integration

While many parents look at school demographics and test scores when choosing a new school or district, presenting them with growth data is more likely to influence them to consider options they may not have otherwise favored and may help create more integrated schools in the process, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of a new working paper.David Houston, a research fellow at Harvard and the paper's lead author, designed an experiment in which participants were presented with the hypothetical choice of finding a new district and given a menu of information that either contained test score performance, growth data, or both sets of information. Participants presented with growth data chose districts where an average of 36% of students were white, while those presented with only test score data chose districts with an average of 43% white students. While this study indicates the way growth data is presented to parents can positively influence their decisions, Houston and other observers caution results may not hold up in the real world, where school choice decisions are more multifaceted and parents have the option of actually visiting the school.