School Choice Architecture

This Comment offers five behavioral-economic “fixes” to improve the school selection process at the heart of school choice: (1) default rules favoring high-performing schools; (2) enrollment ballots arranged by quality, not alphabetically; (3) ballot disclaimers next to substandard school options; (4) “box scores” with high salience information next to each ballot option; and (5) computerized selection assistance. Combined, these fixes offer crucial benefits for urban school choice.

Comment,

Yale Law School, J.D. expected 2016. I am grateful to Professor John Simon, whose feedback and encouragement made this project possible. Professor David Schleicher took the time to read early drafts of this project and offered valuable advice on how to improve it. Thank you to the participants of the Spring 2015 Education and the Law seminar for thoughtful critiques and suggestions. Aurelia Chaudhury, Mark Jia, Charlie Metzger and Zayn Siddique each read drafts and offered assistance in developing this piece. Thanks to Sarah Burack for thoughtful suggestions and editing, to Tiffany Bailey, Diana Li, and Bradley Silverman for investing considerable time and care on this project, and to all of the other editors of the Yale Law & Policy Review whose work made this Comment possible. All errors are my own.