Indiana has a robust portfolio of high school options, including traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools that accept Indiana Choice Scholarships (private voucher schools). This study identified the type of high school enrollment (high school type and voucher status) among the student populations of four cohorts (who were…

These are the appendixes for the report, "Do College and Career Readiness and Early College Success in Indiana Vary Depending on Whether Students Attend Public, Charter, or Private Voucher High Schools? REL 2021-071." This study examined how Indiana grade 9 students with different types of high school enrollment performed on indicators…

This article takes advantage of a recently released national data set on school site expenditures to evaluate spending variations between traditional district operated schools and charter schools operated by for-profit versus nonprofit management firms. Prior research has revealed the revenue-enhancement, private fund-raising capacity of major…

School choice programs such as vouchers and charter schools expand lower cost schooling options for families. We examine how these expansions affect the prevalence of homeschooling. School choice programs may reduce homeschooling if parents that otherwise would have homeschooled their children instead use a school choice program. Homeschooling may…

Despite Indiana's school choice landscape -- including private school vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, inter-district and intra-district enrollment, magnet schools, and charter schools -- not all Indiana communities have reasonable access to options outside of their traditional public schools. This research explores what lack-of-reasonable…

Charter schools are tuition-free public schools operated by independent organizations. Freed from many rules and topdown policies constraining district-operated schools, charter school leaders have direct control over most school-level decisions. Indiana has the best charter school law in the country, according to the National Alliance of Public…

A Toolkit of Emerging Best Practices and Opportunities for Charter Support Organizations Approximately 6.4 million students--roughly 13 percent of the student population between ages 6-21--receive special education and related services in public schools every year. While students identified as eligible for special education require supports and…

Purpose: This study investigates parental empowerment, involvement, and satisfaction in charter, Catholic, Christian, and district-run public schools. The analyses of these indicators across school types also differentiate parents who chose district-run public schools through residential selection from those who did not. Research Design: A survey…

School-funding changes over the last decade have created funding inequities for Indiana's students from low-income communities, students with disabilities, English language learners, and students in public charter schools--inequities which will likely be exacerbated by COVID-19. Students of color are disproportionately impacted by these funding…

The 21st Century Charter School at Gary (21C), a K-12 charter school and is the flagship campus of the Greater Educational Opportunities (GEO) Foundation. GEO is a small charter management organization, founded in 1998 by Kevin Teasley, which today operates five schools in Gary, Indiana, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. GEO focuses on increasing high…

Despite the myriad of challenges that families, students, teachers and policymakers faced in 2021, the momentum to transform education did not waver. New opportunities for students unfolded in more than a dozen states through expanded private and public school choice. An additional 1.7 million students gained eligibility for private choice alone,…

Betsy DeVos, the new U.S. secretary of education, is a strong proponent of allowing public education dollars to go to private schools through vouchers, which enable parents to use public school money to enroll their children in private schools, including religious ones. Vouchers are advanced under the rubric of "school choice"--the…

Utilizing longitudinal data from the national Schools to Watch (STW) program, this paper examines school demographic characteristics and teacher ratings of the implementation of STW criteria in STW schools and schools that have applied but have not yet been designated as a STW. The STW program was established by the National Forum to Accelerate…

It is well established that some charter schools do far better than others at educating their students. This variability has profound implications for the children who attend those schools. Yet painful experience shows that rebooting or closing a low-performing school is a drawn-out and excruciating process. This report investigates whether or not…

For the past 30 years, America's K-12 education system has experienced an era of expanding educational choice. Although students who participate in private school choice programs and are enrolled in charter schools comprise a small portion of the K-12 population relative to students in district schools, choice is becoming a larger part of the K-12…