The Double Burden of School Choice

School 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.