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…

To date, there is a paucity of research that examines differences between charter schools that operate in suburban and nonsuburban contexts. This article examines whether students in suburban charter schools perform better or worse than their counterparts in traditional public schools or students in urban charter schools. Boasting the largest and…

This paper examines how financial aid reform based on postsecondary institutional performance impacts student choice. Federal and state regulations often reflect concerns about the private, for-profit sector's poor employment outcomes and high loan defaults, despite the sector's possible theoretical advantages. We use student-level data to examine…

The innovative and culturally responsive teaching practices provided in high-quality charter schools are not only providing Hispanic students with an excellent alternative to district public schools, but they are also yielding academic results that show neither race/ethnicity nor income level must determine a child's future. The compilation of…

This article outlines different forms of education privatization operating globally, examines their prevalence within the United States, and analyzes whether student marginalization and segregation occurs at the local level. We analyze six U.S. districts with higher saturation levels of charter schools, the most predominant type of privatization…

The Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA), the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), and the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University (Gardner Center) are collaborating to understand residence and school enrollment patterns of students and families in the Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN) service…

This report summarizes the state of competition in American K-12 education. It pays particular attention to the prevalence and market penetration of charter schools, private school vouchers, and tax-credit scholarships as market reforms. The effect of added institutional competition from charters, vouchers, and tax-credit scholarships on the…

Many school districts and high schools provide well-designed pathways that combine rigorous academic instruction with technical education and real-world experience into a career-themed program of study. This Linked Learning approach helps districts and high schools prepare all students for both college and career, not just one objective or the…

This study is designed to increase understanding of the district's role in school improvement and factors contributing to the success of districts and their schools. American Institutes for Research (AIR), as a partner in the California Comprehensive Center at WestEd, has identified high-performing districts in California to learn from their…

Increased school choice is leading to enrollment patterns that do not reflect attendance in the neighborhood school. The impact of this increased mobility on scholastic achievement is still undecided, in part because of the difficulty in untangling compositional and contextual effects on educational outcomes. This article uses data from the Los…

Diane Ravitch's book, "The death and life of the great American school system," is an exploration and critique of educational change in the United States since the report "A Nation at Risk" in 1983 and more specifically since the passing of the No Child Left Behind legislation in January, 2002. Arguably, there are several…

Allowing students to transfer to schools across district lines is gaining more attention as a strategy for reformers looking to reduce economic and racial segregation in public education and give students in failing schools a better chance to achieve, and a number of organizations have endorsed the idea. Interdistrict choice, advocates assert,…

Everyone knows that student achievement often suffers when children and families move, leaving behind their school and neighborhood, yet, in urban districts like Los Angeles, mobility is now encouraged by the development of mixed-markets of diverse schools, including charter, pilot, and magnet schools in. Over 60 new school facilities were opened…

Although the for-profit retail and nonprofit education markets are not identical, many of the strategies used by reformers to improve markets for banking and food services could nonetheless benefit public education. As district and community leaders, charter school authorizers, and policymakers expand the marketplace of schools, they would be…

In the last three decennia, many governments have introduced market mechanisms in education. They have done so by enhancing parental choice and encouraging school competition, through policies like abolishing catchment areas, creating voucher programmes and setting up charter schools. These market mechanisms have given rise to fierce debates in…