The goal of "The 123s" is to present the increasingly large body of private school choice research in a clear and easy-to-read format and cite the relevant studies so that anyone who is interested in the individual results can easily find them and read in more detail. This report is divided into 11 sections. The first section summarizes…

The 2020 Democratic Party platform promises a ban on all federal funding for for-profit charter schools, explaining that "education is a public good and should not be saddled with a private profit motive." A look at Academica, a large U.S.-based education service, and their response to the COVID-19 crisis might temper some of that…

Transportation, or the lack thereof, can be a huge barrier to families exercising choice. Simply because a state authorizes the creation of charter schools or grants vouchers to families looking to send their children to private schools doesn't mean that those children will actually be able to attend those schools. They have to be able to get…

In education policy, conservatives have often been more identifiable by what they are against than what they are for. Ronald Reagan ran in 1980 promising to eliminate the Department of Education, and since then, numerous conservative politicians have stated they wish to do the same. At times, conservatives have been known to support school choice…

A privatization extremist. A religious zealot. A culture warrior. The new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, was painted as any or all of these things in the fevered weeks between the 2016 presidential election and her confirmation hearing. In the days following that hearing, tens of thousands of people flooded the lines of congressional…

Crises have a way of shaking up the status quo and creating space for new thinking. When shocked out of their familiarity, people start to ask questions as to why things are the way that they are and brainstorm ways to make them better. Enter entrepreneurs. They are the people who take those ideas that are lying around and attempt to create…

In almost any conversation about accountability for private schools, accountability for public schools is assumed. This is a dangerous myth. By assuming that the edifice that states and the federal government have created over the past several decades actually holds schools accountable, school choice advocates immediately find themselves in an…

As more and more cities and states diversify the educational options available to parents and students, creating magnet, open-enrollment, small school, career and technical, charter, and private school opportunities, educational choice markets need to become a part of the regulation conversation. In this report, Mike McShane examines the…