Open enrollment in public schools is a form of school choice that allows students to attend schools other than the one assigned to them by their school district. Though often less visible than policies such as charter schools, vouchers, and education savings accounts, K-12 open enrollment is rising in popularity across the nation, and 73 percent…

Nearly 70 years after Milton Friedman first proposed K-12 education vouchers, students in Arizona, Iowa, Utah, West Virginia, and other states can customize their education using education savings accounts (ESAs). ESAs allow parents to spend public education funding on expenses such as private school tuition, tutoring, and homeschooling curricula.…

In the context of ongoing discussions about student costs of non-credit developmental writing, this study reports on the affordances of Basic Writing as a traditional, stand-alone course at a career-focused, four-year university. Participants were students who took Basic Writing and Composition 1 between Fall 2011 and Spring 2013 (N = 2,693) in…

Our 31st annual report analyzing data from southeast Wisconsin's public school districts finds that while 68 of the 92 school districts are exceeding or significantly exceeding expectations on our new state report cards, there are large achievement gaps across the region on state assessments for low-income students and students of color. Key…

Our 32nd annual report analyzing data from southeast Wisconsin's public school districts finds progress on some college readiness indicators and largely positive showings on district report cards. Those results are offset, however, by discouraging results on standardized tests and continued substantial achievement gaps between students of…

For the last 30 years, the Public Policy Forum has collected and analyzed education data to produce an annual report on the demographics, academic performance, and finances of public school districts in southeast Wisconsin. In the three decades of producing this report, few years have exhibited as much change and transformation as this one. The…

This paper examines the competitive effects of a unique school choice program implemented in the late 1990s, Wisconsin's open enrollment program, which allows families to send their children to schools outside their home district. In contrast to other school choice programs, districts not only face negative consequences from losing students and…

Using data for all Wisconsin school districts over the 2003/04 through 2006/07 school years, we evaluate the state of Wisconsin's Open Enrollment (inter-district transfer) program to determine which school district characteristics influence parental transfer decisions. To our knowledge, this is the first study of school choice in a public school…

Over nearly three decades, the Public Policy Forum has collected and analyzed education data to report on the demographics, academic performance, and finances of public schools and districts in southeast Wisconsin. This 29th annual public schools report continues that tradition with updated analyses of new data and trends to shed light on the…

The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association is the governing body for high school athletics in the State of Wisconsin. For some time they have been concerned with the growing perception that there is recruitment occurring in varsity basketball within its member schools. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to determine what, if any,…

The question that drives this article is why some school districts decide to open up charter schools and others do not. Several answers are plausible: (a) entrepreneurial initiative, (b) structural explanations, and (c) spatial competition. We use data for the state of Wisconsin derived from extensive case studies of 19 charter schools and…