Seismic shifts are shaking the landscape of K-12 education. Public school districts across the US have lost over a million students since 2020. Meanwhile, novel educational models--such as microschools and hybrid homeschooling--have more than doubled their enrollments. This paper explores what's driving families to seek these new learning…

This study explores the perspective of day school parents as they engage with questions of race with their children and in the context of their day school choice. We convened a book group in summer 2020. Nine White mothers of school-aged children met over four ninety minute sessions to discuss Margaret Hagermans' (2018) White Kids: Growing up with…

In recent years, Innovative Schools in Dali have received increasing coverage in Chinese social media and have also attracted middle-class parents from cities, as viable bottom-up educational initiatives. This paper explores the rationales for Chinese middle-class parents' choice of Innovative Schools in Dali. Analysis of data from online…

This interview study examines the school choices of white middle class parents who live in a large Northeastern city. Interviewees identify as progressive urbanites and express an appreciation for racial diversity. Simultaneously, interviewees draw on anti-Black stereotypes when evaluating school options and avoiding majority Black schools. While…

There is fierce controversy in the United States over whether parents should be able to choose their children's schools and/or curriculum. To discuss the pedagogical arguments inherent in this question, Todd Alan Price and Ruprecht Mattig begin with the classical concept of "Bildung" as developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt around 1800.…

This paper studies how parents' school choices are affected by information about school and peer quality and how social interactions mediate changes in demand. I design an information intervention that cross-randomizes whether parents receive information about school quality (school value-added) and peer quality. Using a spillover design that…

Public PreK programs are an increasingly popular policy tool to equalize early learning opportunities. Programs can be universally available or targeted to support children's readiness. At the intersection of early childhood and K-12 education, their hybrid status can be difficult for families to negotiate. Based on interviews completed in 2018,…

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed preschool education, expanding beyond traditional methods to include digital learning innovations, even in early childhood education. This study investigates the implementation of Islamic education through an Online Preschool Program in Indonesia. Using a qualitative approach, the research involved 20 parents…

In this interview study, we utilize a theoretical framework that combines Bell's theory of choice sets with DisCrit to explore how parents of students with IEPs (SIEPs) experienced a forced school choice embedded with the 2013 mass school closures in Chicago. We find that a child's disability was a primary factor in parent's choices. Further, all…

This poll was conducted between June 5-7, 2024 among a sample of 2,251 Adults. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a target sample of Adults based on gender, educational attainment, age, race, and region. Results based on the full survey have a measure of precision of plus or minus 2.44 percentage points.…

The participation of multilingual children in minority language immersion programmes is under-researched internationally. The Republic of Ireland (RoI) has become a linguistically and culturally diverse society. In the RoI, parents have the opportunity to educate their child in English-medium or Irish-medium (IM) schools. However, the cohort of…

School choice policy in China aims to achieve educational equity by limiting school choice. Synchronous Admission Reform (SAR hereafter) is a recent school choice reform in China, which continues to limit parents' autonomy and strengthen the equal distribution of school resources. This study explores Chinese middle-class parents' (n = 21) justice…

In the ever-shifting world of school choice, what began as a homegrown charter-school network's small experiment in microschooling stands out as unique -- and as a uniquely promising model for replication. Gem Prep, a network of seven brick-and-mortar K-12 charter schools in Idaho, anchored by a longstanding and high-performing online school,…

This poll was conducted between September 12-15, 2024 among a sample of 2,252 adults. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a target sample of adults based on gender, educational attainment, age, race, and region. This report highlights findings pertaining to: (1) Views on K-12 Education; (2) Schooling and…

Studies of charter closure rates typically focus on year-to-year closures. While important for researchers, such studies provide little guidance to families seeking to understand the risk of enrolling their child in a charter school. That is because studies determining how many schools close each year provide no information on how long the school…