School Organization and Market Ecology: a realist sociological look at the infrastructure of school choice

Programs of school choice are based largely on the idea of a free market’. Recent reform efforts have been based on the assumption that market‐driven educational systems would bring higher achievement levels and greater satisfaction among clients. According to popular views, parents would shop for a school just as they do for any other commodity and competition between schools would ensue, with each school trying to improve itself thereby attracting consumers. There is a major drawback to this reasoning. Markets are rarely completely free from regulation and control, and the desires of individuals do not fully explain the social facts of school choice. As a complement to current school choice studies, a structural explanation of school choice within the theory of network analysis is presented. The study analyses choice in terms of inter‐school student transfers and explains choice as the combined result of two factors. The first is the organization of student mobility in schools, in terms of vacant positions (timing and volume) and student body composition, which posits nine ideal types of school organization. The second factor is the ecology of the market, given in the number of schools in each type. Research conducted in a large city in Israel serves as an example for the approach. The more general implications of the study suggest directions for the theoretical refinement of mobility and attainment studies in sociology.