Education for All? A Nationwide Audit Study of Schools of Choice

This correspondence study by Peter Bergman and Isaac McFarlin Jr. uses an email audit design to study differences in response rates to emails requesting information about student enrollment for students with varying characteristics. Both charter schools and traditional public schools with intra-district school choice were emailed with questions from a fictitious parent about the enrollment process for a child. The authors find that both school types were less likely to reply to emails regarding students characterized as having poor behavior or low achievement, but charters were additionally less likely to reply to emails regarding students with special needs.