[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-detail-590339-en":59,"doc-seo-590339-105":81},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":60},{"doc_id":61,"user_id":62,"nickname":63,"user_avatar":64,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":66,"doc_content":67,"file_id":68,"file_url":69,"file_type":70,"file_size":71,"view_count":24,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":72,"language":73,"language_code":74,"site_id":75,"html_lang":74,"table_of_contents":76,"faqs":77,"seo_title":78,"seo_description":66,"update_tm":79,"read_time":80,"preview_page_count":4},590339,1374404730887,"Pentious","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_6f874abed73319feea01a86fa6f0fab8","The Double Burden of School Choice - read online free","School choice policy transfers the responsibility for accessing high-quality schools from the state to parents, while research has rarely captured how families subjectively experience the burdens of choosing. Using interviews and focus groups with 36 parents across traditional public, charter, and private schools in six districts in Colorado, Louisiana, and Michigan, the study analyzes administrative hassles and how local policy design shaped costs, uncertainty, waiting periods, and feelings of disempowerment.","AERA Open  \nJanuary-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–25 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251349179  \nArticle reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nThe Double Burden of School Choice  \nHuriya Jabbar  \nUniversity of Southern California  \nHanora Tracy  \nTulane University  \nEmily Germain  \nLearning Policy Institute  \nSarah Winchell Lenhoff  \nWayne State University  \nJacob Alonso  \nUniversity of Southern California  \nShira Haderlein  \nMathematica, Inc.  \nSchool choice policy shifts the responsibility of accessing high-quality schools from the state to parents, yet there is little research on how parents subjectively experience the burdens of choosing schools. In this case study, we conducted interviews and focus groups with 36 parents attending traditional public, charter, and private schools across six school districts in Colorado, Louisiana, and Michigan to examine bureaucratic hassles in choice policy. We outline the administrative burdens of choice policies and how local policy design influenced the costs parents experienced. Despite policy efforts to improve equity and access in school choice, families dealt with uncertainty and waiting periods and ultimately felt disempowered by the process. School choice, we argue, placed a double burden on low-income Black and Latinx families through the learning, compliance, and psychological costs of choosing as well as the burden of responsibility for their child’s educational success.  \nKeywords: educational policy, equity, families, policy, urban education, case studies, qualitative research  \nIntroduction  \nSchool choice policies, including charter schools, open enrollment, and school vouchers, seek to expand educational options for families by allowing students to attend a school other than their zoned or neighborhood public school. Choice policies often target children from racially minoritized groups and children living in poverty, who are more likely to attend underinvested schools (Scott & Holme, 2016), with the purported aim to empower families to access  \nhigh-quality options not previously available to them (Scott, 2013) . Yet researchers have found that school choice also can reproduce or widen inequalities in access to high-quality schools (Fong & Faude, 2018; Jennings, 2010; LacirenoPaquet et al., 2002; Lenhoff, 2020; Lubienski et al., 2009) . Low-income Black and Latinx families are disproportionately more likely to navigate the school choice landscape (Jabbar & Lenhoff, 2019; Scott, 2005) given their unequal access to high-quality educational opportunities. Rather than engage in the multilayered process of public school choice,  \nCreative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons  \nAttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use,  \nreproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)).  \nJabbar et al.  \nparents with more resources often can move into the attendance zone of their choice or retain that option as a backup if they do not gain admission to a desired school.  \nSchool choice policy shifts the responsibility of accessing high-quality schools from the state to parents, introducing what Potterton (2020) called a dynamic of parental accountability. Many caregivers encounter administrative burdens when wading through the sludge of information about schools and during the application process, which can undermine access to these programs (Moynihan et al., 2014; Thaler, 2018). Although there is a large ","cbCaidXYEVfuPK3O","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaidXYEVfuPK3O","pdf",575961,25,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## School choice and inequality\n## Administrative burden and parental accountability\n## Learning, compliance, and psychological costs\n## Psychological costs and middle-class anxiety","[{\"question\":\"What problem does the study address about school choice policies?\",\"answer\":\"It examines how parents subjectively experience administrative and psychological burdens when policies shift responsibility for accessing high-quality schools from the state to families.\"},{\"question\":\"How was the research conducted?\",\"answer\":\"The study used interviews and focus groups with 36 parents attending traditional public, charter, and private schools across six districts in Colorado, Louisiana, and Michigan.\"},{\"question\":\"What kinds of burdens does the paper analyze?\",\"answer\":\"It analyzes learning, compliance, and psychological costs, and how local policy design influences the costs parents experience, including uncertainty and waiting periods.\"}]","The Double Burden of School Choice - read online free | PDF",1792069379,63,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":83},"ok",{"site_id":75,"language":74,"slug":84,"title":65,"keywords":85,"description":66,"schema_data":86,"social_meta":140,"head_meta":142,"extra_data":144,"updated_unix":145},"the-double-burden-of-school-choice-read-online-free","",{"@graph":87,"@context":139},[88,102,122],{"@type":89,"itemListElement":90},"BreadcrumbList",[91,95,97,100],{"item":92,"name":93,"@type":94,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":96,"name":9,"@type":94,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":98,"name":40,"@type":94,"position":99},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":101,"name":65,"@type":94,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-double-burden-of-school-choice-read-online-free/590339/",{"url":101,"name":65,"@type":103,"image":104,"author":109,"headline":65,"publisher":111,"fileFormat":114,"inLanguage":74,"description":66,"dateModified":115,"datePublished":116,"encodingFormat":114,"isAccessibleForFree":117,"interactionStatistic":118},"DigitalDocument",{"url":105,"@type":106,"width":107,"height":108},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-double-burden-of-school-choice-read-online-free/590339.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":63,"@type":110},"Person",{"url":92,"name":112,"@type":113},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":119,"interactionType":120,"userInteractionCount":24},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":121},"ViewAction",{"@type":123,"mainEntity":124},"FAQPage",[125,131,135],{"name":126,"@type":127,"acceptedAnswer":128},"What problem does the study address about school choice policies?","Question",{"text":129,"@type":130},"It examines how parents subjectively experience administrative and psychological burdens when policies shift responsibility for accessing high-quality schools from the state to families.","Answer",{"name":132,"@type":127,"acceptedAnswer":133},"How was the research conducted?",{"text":134,"@type":130},"The study used interviews and focus groups with 36 parents attending traditional public, charter, and private schools across six districts in Colorado, Louisiana, and Michigan.",{"name":136,"@type":127,"acceptedAnswer":137},"What kinds of burdens does the paper analyze?",{"text":138,"@type":130},"It analyzes learning, compliance, and psychological costs, and how local policy design influences the costs parents experience, including uncertainty and waiting periods.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":101,"og:type":141,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":112,"og:description":66},"article",{"robots":143,"canonical":101},"index,follow",{"doc_id":61,"site_id":75},1792390994]