The experience of the school-choice program in Alum Rock (California) illustrates how a determined effort to reach all parents and provide them with information about choices and programs can have a reasonable degree of success. Parental information is essential in avoiding inequities of opportunity. (SLD)

Key factors influencing the decision to attend private school are identified in this paper. It looks at the factors accounting for varying rates of private school attendance and estimates the responsiveness of such attendance to government support. It studies the variation in private school attendance rates at three levels: across states, across…

To help public schools experience free-market competition, Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander and President Bush propose parental choice among private, parochial, and public schools, supported by public financing for program design and tuition grants. Sidebars highlight church/state separation concerns and school choice experiments in…

This research brief recaps a study of California charter schools. After a discussion of the key distinctions among charter schools, the brief focuses on the following questions: (1) Who attends charter schools? (2) How does student achievement in charter schools compare with that in conventional public schools? (3) What oversight do chartering…

Among the major concerns surrounding school-choice programs is their potential to stratify students along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class. The latest among four U.S. Department of Education national evaluations of charter schools reports no evidence that charter schools are predominantly white or that they segregate…

School choice, as one avenue toward educational reform, must be placed in context, according to this brief policy analysis. Prepared mainly for policymakers in California and stressing implications for public education in California, the report briefly discusses five samples of school choice: (1) magnet schools; (2) charter schools; (3) open…

In this article, the author discusses African American mothers' beliefs about the negative impact that teacher bias can have on students' self-esteem and academic achievement. She draws from in-depth interview data to highlight mothers' opinions of, and experiences with, teachers they characterize as "unqualified" and…

This document reports on a pilot project called "The Consortium of Schools for the Future," designed to anticipate and make necessary adaptations for the future of public education. A section describing the project precedes a discussion of the disparity between advantaged and disadvantaged students--particularly along racial and ethnic…

Investigated in this study are the school sorting process (how students are matched with schools, courses, and teachers) and the possible positive effects of mandating that schools disclose how this process occurs. After an introduction, chapters 2 and 3 present findings about the sorting practices in seven California school districts. It was…

This volume features the reform journeys of six American high schools. The six high schools portrayed here include four large comprehensive high schools (Oakland Technical High in Oakland, California, and Brighton High in Boston, Massachusetts, are urban; Sir Francis Drake in Marin County, California, and Rex Putnam in North Clackamas, Oregon, are…

This volume includes the first 15 papers in a 32-paper collection. After a prologue by Mkhululi David Graham Du Bois entitled "Seeking Truth in Research", the papers are: (1) "`Knowledge is Light, Knowledge is Power': African American Education in Antebellum America" (Christopher M. Span); (2) "Curriculum, Culture, and…