The importance of school quality ratings for school choices: Evidence from a nationwide system
Abstract
Studying a long-running nationwide system of school inspections, we show how school choices and enrollment respond to new information about school quality. We use exogenous variation in the timing of school inspections around the school choice deadline to isolate the effect of information over and above underlying changes in school quality. We find that low- and higher-income parents respond similarly to new information. Conditional on household location, non-targeted information provision therefore does not increase school segregation by household income.