In the past few years, four states have established programs that provide public financial support to students who choose to attend a private school. These programs--a tax-credit-funded scholarship initiative in Florida and voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio--offer a glimpse of what expansive statewide choice might look like. What…

In 1999 the Ohio Supreme Court found the Cleveland school voucher program to be constitutional, thereby allowing the three-year-old initiative to continue. However, the school voucher program was ended when Judge Solomon Oliver enjoined the program after the anti-voucher coalition filed suit asking for a preliminary injunction. The judge's…

The big battles over school vouchers in American education have focused on programs serving low-income children who live in urban areas. Milwaukee's program, begun in 1990, is the biggest and oldest in the country, and the District of Columbia effort, funded by the federal government, has been the most carefully studied. Both have been focal…

The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001 brought new urgency to the task of turning around low-performing schools. While many schools have been identified as needing improvement under NCLB, only a small percentage have failed to make progress for long enough--six years--to be subject to restructuring, the most serious consequence…

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.…