For more than two decades, tax-credit scholarship (TCS) policies have helped American families provide their children with the learning environment that meets their individual needs. Now available in 19 states, nearly 300,000 students nationwide use tax-credit scholarships to attend the school of their family's choice. TCS policies create an…

All tax credit scholarship (TCS) programs are state programs. States develop program policies and requirements, including establishing the roles and responsibilities of scholarship granting organizations (SGOs) and participating private schools. The President's fiscal year 2020 budget request included a proposal for federal tax credits for…

Reflecting post-bureaucratic organisation theory, education reformers intended charter schools to empower school-level leaders, most typically principals, with autonomy to pursue clear, student-centred missions. Yet little research explores whether charter school principals have more power than traditional public school counterparts. We summarise…

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,…

In partnership with the National Charter School Resource Center (NCSRC), the National Association for Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) has been conducting authorizer assessments over the past six years. However, the correlation between high-quality authorization practices and charter school impact has largely been unexplored. This report uses a…

This report is the result of a year-long exploration of the effects of charter schools and the issues that surround them. Each of its eleven issues-based stories tells what the Network for Public Education (NPE) has learned not only from research, but also from talking with parents, community members, teachers, and school leaders around the nation…

Current legislation encourages schools to educate students with disabilities (SWDs) in general education settings to the greatest extent appropriate. However, it is unclear whether inclusion in general education settings provides SWDs a sufficient opportunity to learn the academic content assessed by accountability measures. This initial study was…

Many proponents of private school choice take for granted that schools won't participate if government asks too much of them, especially if it demands that they be publicly accountable for student achievement. Were such school refusals to be widespread, the programs themselves could not serve many kids. But is this assumption justified? A new…

In December 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB), as the nation's major law governing public schools. ESSA retains the requirement that states test all students in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, as well as the requirement that…

The author reports on a new study which reveals that the lowest-performing public K-8 schools often linger in that state for years, neither improving enough to get off accountability life support nor being shuttered completely. The study adds that persistently failing charter schools fare no better than regular public schools. Of 2,025 chronically…

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is working to respond to increased interest in the use of growth models for school accountability. Growth models are based on tracking change in individual student achievement scores over multiple years. While growth models have been used for decades in academic research and program evaluation, a…

States are increasingly focusing the mission of their elementary and secondary education systems on preparing all students for success in postsecondary education and 21st century careers. As standards have increased, so too have graduation requirements. Today, 20 states and the District of Columbia have adopted such high school graduation…

Opponents of school choice argue that private schools are not "accountable" because they are not subject to detailed oversight by a regulatory bureaucracy. They claim private school employees can be expected to engage in abusive and criminal behavior more frequently. School choice supporters respond that parents hold private schools…

The turnaround recommendations and framework in "The Turnaround Challenge" grew out of both new research and synthesis of extensive existing research, as carried out by Mass Insight Education & Research Institute and its partners since September 2005. If the main report is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, this supplement represents…