SmartChoice: An Online Recommender System to Support Low-Income Families in Public School Choice

Public school choice at the primary and secondary levels is a key element of the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).  If a school does not meet assessment goals for two consecutive years, by law the district must offer students the opportunity to transfer to a school that is meeting its goals.  Making a choice with such potential impact on a child's future is clearly monumental, yet astonishingly few parents take advantage of the opportunity.  Our research has shown that a significant part of the problem arises from issues in information access and information overload, particularly for low socioeconomic status families.  Thus we have developed an online, content-based recommender system, called SmartChoice .  It provides parents with school recommendations for individual students based on parents' preferences and students' needs, interests, abilities, and talents.  The first version of the online application was deployed and live for focus group participants who used it for the January and March/April 2008 Charlotte-Mecklenburg school choice periods.  This article describes the SmartChoice Program and the results of our initial and followup studies with participants.

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