The performance of public education in Michigan has been significantly below average across the country for decades (US News, 2019). Lawmakers in Michigan sought to remedy this in the 1990's with the introduction of charter schools into the educational landscape. Throughout the years, there has been significant debate around whether charter…

Using the three paper format, this dissertation contributes to the literature evaluating school choice and school competition. This study highlights important gaps in our collective understanding of the impact of school choice policy. This dissertation contributes in multiple ways to the closing of important gaps related to the effect of school…

Charter schools and inter-district public school choice are a growing part of the public school system. Theoretically, competition for students might lead to competition for effective and diverse teaching faculties. This study assesses how competition from school choice relates to the distribution of teacher characteristics across school contexts,…

Michigan's former governor, John Engler, was naturally attracted to charter schools. He had seen for too long how school districts treated students as their property and the state as an endless funding source, and he wanted that to change. Engler saw the chartering strategy as a politically viable means for gaining leverage over school districts…

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…

Almost since the time public schools first opened in the United States there have been those seeking to reform them. One of the most persistent cries for reform has been the call to apply the free market economic model of competition through consumer choice on the public school system. Schools, consumer choice supporters posit, when faced with the…

School choice is intended to leverage competition between schools to produce better educational opportunities for disadvantaged students. Yet we know very little about how competition impacts entire populations of schools of different types in distributing educational options across segregated social landscapes. We draw on theories from the…

Charter schools have been one of the most important dimensions of recent school reform measures in the United States. Currently, there are more than 5,000 charter schools spread across forty U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Though there have been numerous studies on the effects of charter schools, these have mostly been confined to…

School choice policies are intended to provide students in poorly performing schools the option of transferring to a better school. The associated loss of funding to new competitors is expected, in turn, to benefit students who remain in their assigned schools by spurring improved performance among the educators in them. The prospects for such…

This article examines the implications of competition between school districts in a mid-Michigan metropolitan area. Over the 10-year period after Michigan's major school-funding reform in 1994, many urban and suburban districts found themselves competing for per-pupil state funding. Suburban districts need extra students to make up budgetary…

Many Catholic educators assume that charter schools pose a significant threat to Catholic schools, especially in the urban core. Through an analysis of educational policy variations in Arizona and Michigan, this article demonstrates that while charter schools pose a threat to Catholic school enrollments, they do not always do so. (Contains 1…

This study sought to determine whether increased competition among Michigan public schools, resulting from charter schools and the state's "schools-of-choice" program, has improved educational opportunities for children and whether competition encourages or discourages schools to respond to the needs and demands of students and parents.…

Discusses effect of competition from charter schools and voucher programs on students who remain in public schools; focuses on Milwaukee (effect of vouchers), Arizona (charter schools) and Michigan (charter schools). By comparing test results between schools affected by competition and those not affected, argues competition improves public…

This book presents 15 papers on charters, vouchers, and public education: (1) "Introduction: A New Direction in Public Education?" (Paul E. Peterson and David E. Campbell); (2) "Charter Schools: Taking Stock" (Chester E. Finn, Jr, Bruno V. Manno, and Gregg Vanourek); (3) "School Choice in Michigan" (Michael Mintrom…