ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some questions related to the role of information in school choice. It discusses how much information parents need to make choice work, contrasting "limited rationality" to "full information rationality". This essential distinction allows us to set realistic expectations for what parents should know and how many parents should know it. The chapter also discusses the roles of schools (the providers of education) and government (the funders) in managing information. The success of choice programs, and the quality of information parents have, will be affected by the extent to which education providers commit to disseminating quality information that parents can use. The chapter discusses two barriers: First, many schools have no incentives to disseminate information widely and may, in fact, have incentives to misreport data; second, many school systems do not have the capacity (or are unwilling to redeploy existing resources) to support serious dissemination of quality information.
