Articles

If a school does not meet assessment goals for two consecutive years, by law the district must offer stu dents the opportunity to transfer to a school that is meet ing 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, par ticularly for low socioeconomic status families. Thus we have developed an online, content-based recommender sys tem, called SmartChoice. It provides parents with school rec ommendations for individual students based on parents' pref erences and students' needs, interests, abilities, and talents.