Private school voucher programs provide government subsidies to eligible students for tuition and other education-related costs. Parents participating in choice programs benefit from a larger and more diverse supply of education providers. Private schools must choose whether or not to participate in a voucher program in their community. In…

America has a long history of small-school environments, such as one-room schoolhouses and homeschools. But in recent years, other models have developed, giving students more intimate settings for learning and enabling their families to play a larger role in their schooling. Microschools are a leading example of this growing sector that also…

Independent school leaders are continually faced with the challenges of declining enrollment and expanding public options and currently lack a mechanism to understand what influences parents' reenrollment choices. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a theoretical framework for reenrollment decisions in secular and Catholic…

In New York State, private and religious schools are required to offer a curriculum "substantially equivalent" to what is available in local public schools. Substantial equivalency--which has been law for nearly 130 years--allows parents to direct the education of their children by enrolling them in the school of their choice, while also…

Horace Mann's vision of a common school to educate American children has not been realized. Instead, our country is experimenting with many different kinds of schools: charters, independents, parochials, and magnets, to name a few. These schools fill a particular niche for families, with the potential to focus education to the needs of each child.…

An approach to handle partial compliance behavior using principal stratification is presented and applied to a subset of the longitudinal data from the New York City School Choice Scholarship Program, a randomized experiment designed to assess the effects of private schools versus public schools on academic achievement. The initial analysis…

One of the key claims of choice advocates is that it will take diverse schooling options to engage all children in learning. In a school system truly open to new providers of instruction and diverse schooling options, private schools and public schools of choice can vie for customers by trying different subject themes and pedagogies. If a school's…

"Outlook" is the monthly newsletter for the Council for American Private Education (CAPE). Each issue contains information relating to private education such as: new legislation and regulations, the most recent research, court rulings, national trends, federal initiatives, private school news briefs, and more. This issue includes: (1)…

Develops conceptual framework for analyzing school choice decisions, evaluates past empirical research, and estimates individual choice model using a data set merging 1980 individual-level census data with information about New York schools. Results suggest parents are sensitive to the relative quality of school offerings, the tuition of religious…

In "The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools" (Brookings, 2002), the authors and their colleagues reported that attending a private school had no discernible impact, positive or negative, on the test scores of non-African-American students participating in school voucher programs in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Dayton, Ohio.…

To examine the impact of enrollment shifts between public and private schools on public school expenditures per pupil, 1970-71 data were gathered on private school tuition and enrollment, public and parochial school expenditures, and demographic variables. Analysis using an economic model indicated few effects on public school expenditures. (RW)

As Minnesota's experience shows, school choice is not the panacea that John Chubb and Terry Moe have proclaimed. However, introducing a marketplace into public education helps create the accountability that school reformers have sought, even as it diminishes the necessity for prescriptive mandates. When students choose their schools, they…

This report shows that New York can reduce special ed costs and enrollment--and improve parental satisfaction with the program as part of the bargain--by adopting two simple reforms: changing the formula funding special education from a "bounty" system to a "lump-sum" system; and implementing a voucher program for children in…

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…