Historically, private education has been an option mostly for families who could afford the cost or received financial help. Years of research have shown that many families would choose private schools and other educational resources for their children if they did not face insurmountable financial or geographical limitations. Private educational…

This report argues that the Michigan state constitution's "Blaine Amendment," a provision which prevents parents from drawing on state funding to go outside the public school system, is superseded by the United States Supreme Court's 2020 ruling in the case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The report discusses a legislative…

The growth of state laws creating private school vouchers and charter schools has mounting and alarming ramifications for students' rights, and those ramifications are shaped by a complex and shifting set of legal rules. This article explains the interplay between the increase of these school-choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court's recent…

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court held in "Carson v. Makin" that Maine violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by excluding religious schools from a private-school-choice program--colloquially known as "town tuitioning"--for students in school districts without public high schools. Writing for the majority,…

In "The Privateers," Josh Cowen lays bare the surprising history of tax-funded school choice programs in the United States and warns of the dangers of education privatization. A former evaluator of state and local school voucher programs, Cowen demonstrates how, as such programs have expanded in the United States, so too has the…

The full reach of the U.S. Supreme court's 2020 ruling in "Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue" has yet to be seen, but it has the potential to reshape the school-choice landscape. The ruling, which prohibited Montana from excluding students at religious schools from a tax-credit scholarship program, will figure prominently in many…

"Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities" examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns…

The long-standing effort to desegregate schools in the United States has been fostered, in part, by the development of magnet schools, which were launched in the 1960s to offer appealing choices of educational programs that could attract an integrated population of families. Magnet schools are public elementary or secondary schools that seek to…