DOI: 10.3886/e244296v1
title: Transportation in School Choice

description: This mixed-method analysis examines school transportation in the context of a metropolitan interdistrict school choice program. We interviewed parents and caregivers participating in school choice to understand how they and their children experienced school transportation. We supplemented these data with socio-spatial analyses of commutes to bus stops and bus rides to schools. Findings point to a range of burdens faced by families in the choice program. Suburban and city families and students of color endured disproportionate sacrifices to attend a magnet or non-neighborhood traditional public school. Our findings add to the emerging literature on transportation inequities within school choice.
description: Response Rates: N/A
description: To collect parent interview data, we accessed student-level data for students enrolled in a magnet or transfer school between the 2017-18 and 2022-23 academic years. Annual K-12 enrollments averaged approximately 20,000 students in magnets and another 2,000 students in the city-to-suburban transfer program. Roughly half of the magnet students resided in the central city, with the other half living in one of the surrounding suburbs. The suburban transfer school sample constituted mainly of city-resident students who attended a suburban public school. <b></b>The database contained student demographics, school, home address, and parent contact information. Using stratified random sampling, we selected students across choice programs, municipalities, and grade levels. We divided the list of possible participants into three groups: city residents attending the magnet choice program, city residents in the transfer program, and residents of surrounding towns participating in the interdistrict magnet choice program. We then sampled these subgroups in approximate proportion to their participation in the overall program. To avoid any town-specific effects, we also prioritized recruiting participants from multiple towns in the surrounding region. These strata were designed to ensure a broad range of voices across the choice programs while preventing any single perspective from being overrepresented. We employed rolling random selection, contacting 25 to 50 parents at a time, to obtain a sample size sufficient to achieve saturation from our interview data (Chitak, 2022). Obtaining the sample was challenging with data collection occurring over a span of five months, from June to November 2023. In total, over 500 parents were contacted via phone, text message, or email, requesting their participation in a brief interview about their transportation experiences. We offered a $25 gift card as an incentive and modest remuneration for their time. Midway through data collection, we adjusted our sampling frame to increase participation from city residents, who remained underrepresented. We stopped data collection when we reached 44 participants, which exceeded our initial goal of 40 participants, due to declining response rates from contacted individuals over time. In addition, this analysis was conducted as part of a report to the state department of education for the state in question, and as such, it had a definitive timeline. While more participants would have been welcome, after clearing the threshold of 40, we proceeded to analysis and interpretation.We conducted virtual or phone interviews with all 44 parents, who collectively represented 71 children who were current or former choice program students. Of the 44 parents interviewed, 18 (40.9 percent) were from the central city and 26 (59.1 percent) were from a suburb (Table 1). Ten of the city parents enrolled their children in the suburban transfer program, five enrolled their children in a magnet school, and two sent their children (siblings) to both a magnet school and a suburban transfer school. Among suburban parents, most (81.5 percent) were enrolled in a magnet school. Finally, five parents had withdrawn their child/ren from a choice program. In terms of race and ethnicity, a little over half of our parent sample (54.5 percent) had an enrolled choice student who identified as Black or African American (Table 2). Another 11.4 percent identified as Latine or Hispanic, and 22.7 percent as white. Relative to the entire choice population, Black or African American and Latine or Hispanic students were modestly overrepresented in our sample, while white students were underrepresented.
description: Adult caregivers of school age children. Smallest Geographic Unit: School bus routes, home to central bus stops to school.