One of the key ele­ments of the New Orleans school mod­el is it pro­vides almost com­plete­ly open enroll­ment, giv­ing par­ents more options and pos­si­bly increas­ing com­pe­ti­tion among schools. Using data from 2004 and 2011, the Era team explores how scaled-up choice has affect­ed par­ents’ school choic­es as well as the fac­tors that seem to dri­ve these deci­sions. The results sug­gest that par­ents are active choosers with less than 20 per­cent now attend­ing the near­est school and the aver­age dis­tance to school attend­ed increased by 1.4 lin­ear miles. How­ev­er, dis­tance to school still con­strains par­ents’ abil­i­ty to select schools that match their pref­er­ences espe­cial­ly among low-income fam­i­lies and those whose chil­dren are in ele­men­tary grades. In addi­tion to dis­tance, the School Per­for­mance Score (SPS) and the avail­abil­i­ty of spe­cif­ic pro­gram options (e.g., after-care in ele­men­tary grades and band and foot­ball in sec­ondary schools) are also impor­tant in both ele­men­tary and sec­ondary grades. The paper also pro­vides results for the choice between pub­lic and pri­vate schools and for parental choice pre-Kat­ri­na. Doug Harris, direc­tor of Edu­ca­tion Research Alliance (Era), will present these find­ings at the inau­gur­al brown bag.