We use a quadratic equation to estimate trends in cohort performances in the charter and district sectors on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 4th and 8th grade between 2005 and 2017. Data consist of over four million test observations of nationally representative samples of students on seven separate math and reading tests. We…

For decades, social theorists have posited--and descriptive accounts have shown--that students isolated by both social class and ethnicity suffer extreme deprivations that limit the effectiveness of equal-opportunity interventions. Even educational programs that yield positive results for moderately disadvantaged students may not prove beneficial…

At the request of the State of Pennsylvania, the School District of Philadelphia, in the summer of 2002, asked three for-profit firms to assume responsibility for 30 of its lowest-performing schools and it asked four nonprofit managers to assume the management of 16 other low-performing schools. A difference-in-differences analysis is used to…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) asks that states "restructure" schools that fail for six years running to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward full proficiency on the part of all students by the year 2014. Although restructuring efforts by most states have been modest, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 2002, directed the School District…

In "The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools" (Brookings, 2002), the authors and their colleagues reported that attending a private school had no discernible impact, positive or negative, on the test scores of non-African-American students participating in school voucher programs in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Dayton, Ohio.…

Presents data from evaluations of school voucher programs in four cities, analyzing the effects on academic performance of switching from public to private schools. Overall, vouchers have a moderately large, positive effect on the achievement of African American students, but no discernable effect on the performance of students of other…

Examined the effects of school vouchers on student test scores in three U.S. cities. Data from randomized field trials indicated that after 2 years, African Americans who switched from public to private schools improved academically relative to their public school peers in all three cities. These effects were not significant for other ethnic…

In the late 1990s, three privately funded school voucher programs for students from low-income families were established in the Dayton, Ohio metropolitan area, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Additional programs were created in Dayton and Washington, D.C. and in 1999, the Children's Scholarship Fund, a nationwide school choice scholarship…

This paper reports on first-year results for an evaluation of the New York School Choice Scholarships Foundation program, which was designed to provide scholarships for children from low-income families currently attending public schools to transfer to private schools. Families won scholarships through a lottery. Researchers examined data from…

This paper presents first-year results of an evaluation of a Children's Scholarship Fund (CSF) program which provided scholarships enabling low-income families nationwide to send their K-8 children to private schools of their choice. Families won scholarships through a lottery. Telephone surveys of parents/caretakers of children who took advantage…

Evaluated the success of the publicly funded school-voucher program in Milwaukee (Wisconsin) using data for 592 students. The Milwaukee experience suggests that privatization in education may result in efficiency gains. Given a choice between public and private schools, Milwaukee parents chose the option best suited for their children. Discusses…

Urban school administrators are being asked to desegregate their schools without adequate financial or legal support. For every example of a national commitment to the goal of school integration, counter instances can be identified. The greatest resistance to desegregation has been at State and local levels, but even the Federal government has…

This book presents the results of research on the effects of vouchers on African American students' achievement in Washington, DC, New York, New York, Dayton, Ohio, and San Antonio, Texas. At the conclusion of a 3-year evaluation, test scores of African American students in New York City's privately funded voucher programs were substantially…

The voucher intervention sponsored by New York City's School Choice Scholarships Foundation (SCSF) has been a valuable source of information about such programs. It began in 1997, when K-4 public school students were invited to apply to SCSF for a voucher to help defray costs of private school tuition. Over 1,200 of 20,000 applicants were offered…

This report presents an evaluation of the Cleveland Scholarship Program (CSP) after two years in operation. The program provided low-income families with scholarships that they could redeem at any participating Cleveland private school. The evaluation of the program involved a survey of two groups of parents in 1998: parents of children in grades…