Journal of Educational Psychology 1996, Vol. 88, No. 3, 451-460 Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-0663/96/S3.O0 School Choice, Family Characteristics, and Home-School Relations: Contributors to School Achievement? Lee Shumow Northern Illinois University Deborah Lowe Vandell University of Wisconsin—Madison Kyungseok Kang Inha University Urban low-income 5th-graders participated in a school-choice study. Families utilizing choice schools (N = 73) were more likely to be African American, lower-income, and high-risk neighborhood residents than families whose children attended assigned schools (N = 100). Firm-responsive parenting, family togetherness, and family supportiveness also were linked positively to utilization of choice. Parent involvement in children's schooling was higher in neighborhood schools. School choice positively predicted children's mathematics achieve- ment and school orientation. Parents who chose schools rated the teachers as practicing more parent-involvement strategies than parents of assigned students, but teachers reported equal practices. Parent ratings of school quality did not differ between conditions, nor did teachers or parents report better relationships in either condition. School choice refers to an educational policy that pro- vides a broad spectrum of options whereby parents can select the schools their children attend. These options in- clude magnet and open-enrollment public schools as well as private schools. Magnet public schools serve students from diverse geographical areas, depend on voluntary enrollment, and have some special offerings designed to attract parents and students (Blank, 1984). Open enrollment involves chil- dren crossing attendance boundaries to attend public schools in neighborhoods other than the one in which they reside (Maddaus, 1988). Private schools, funded by tuition or tuition vouchers, are yet another form of school choice. Because low-income parents are less able than middle- income parents to make residential choices based on the school in the neighborhood or to pay for private-school tuition costs (Darling-Hammond & Kirby, 1985; Williams, Handier, & Hutner, 1983), open-enrollment plans have been developed to allow parents to place their children in a particular school even when they are precluded by eco- Lee Shumow, Department of Educational Psychology, Counsel- ing, and Special Education (EPCSE), Northern Illinois University; Deborah Lowe Vandell, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin—Madison; Kyungseok Kang, Depart- ment of Education, Inha University, Korea. A version of this article was presented at the 1995 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. This research was supported by a grant from the Spen- cer Foundation. We greatly appreciate the helpful critiques provided by Jill Posner and the assistance during data collection provided by Rob Rosenthal and Sarah Richardson. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lee Shumow, Department of EPCSE, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, Illinois 60115. Electronic mail may be sent via Internet to lshumow@niu.edu. nomic circumstances from living in the school's neighbor- hood attendance boundaries. A critical question being raised by researchers and poli- cymakers is the impact of school choice on children's academic achievement (Carnegie Foundation for the Ad- vancement of Teaching, 1992; Clune, 1990; Coleman, 1992). There are several reasons why school choice might be related to academic achievement. First, families are empowered to avoid schools that they perceive to be of low-quality (Wells, 1990). Second, parents are able to select a school with resources that match individual children's needs. Third, parent involvement might be expected to increase in schools the parent has selected (Wells, 1990). Juxtaposed to the potential benefits of school choice, at- tending a neighborhood-assigned school may contribute to children having better academic performance if the proxim- ity to the neighborhood school fosters parental involvement with the school. Much of the research investigating school choice has focused on magnet schools originally designed to encourage voluntary desegregation. Inconsistent results regarding stu- dent achievement are reported. For example, in an evalua- tion completed in the Milwaukee public schools (MPSs), Mitchell (1989) found that magnet school children per- formed better academically than their counterparts in as- signed schools. In an analysis of African American youth attending magnet schools in a large New York school dis- trict, however, Singletary (1993) found little evidence of such differences. One possible explanation for these discrepant findings is differential selection of the magnet school experience by families. Some (Lowe & Miner, 1992; Wells, 1990) have argued that it is the relatively more educated and affluent parents who take advantage of choice plans. Consistent with this argument is a British study by Willms and Echols (1992; cited in Cookson, 1994) that found "creaming" to 451 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.