The growth of state laws creating private school vouchers and charter schools has mounting and alarming ramifications for students' rights, and those ramifications are shaped by a complex and shifting set of legal rules. This article explains the interplay between the increase of these school-choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court's recent…

In education, low-income and racially minoritized students in urban districts are often constructed as 'dependent' -- weak in their social positions but deserving of educational opportunity. This social construction of 'urban' students has been central to school choice politics and policymaking in the United States. In this study, I interrogate…

In 2015, Amsterdam implemented a centralised primary school admissions policy, constraining school choice after a long history of highly autonomous schools and free parental choice which has resulted, in part, in the city's segregated schooling environment. Introduced out of concerns of inequality for parents and disorganisation by schools, this…

Washington, DC's Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), the only federally funded school voucher program in the United States, has provided private school scholarships to low-income students in DC since 2004. From its inception, the program has received significant attention in national debates and has been the subject of rigorous evaluations…

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court held in "Carson v. Makin" that Maine violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by excluding religious schools from a private-school-choice program--colloquially known as "town tuitioning"--for students in school districts without public high schools. Writing for the majority,…

As resegregation occurs across the country, some school districts are pursuing voluntary integration. This qualitative case study uses critical policy analysis to explore the political and social contexts surrounding the early stages of developing a voluntary integration plan in Wake County Public School System, North Carolina. Through analysis of…

Student recruitment is an increasingly important topic and a major challenge for engineering schools all over Europe, which have difficulties in attracting and enrolling gifted students. On the contrary, French graduate engineering schools attract the most talented students of the nation. What are the forces at play? The aim of this paper is to…

To better understand how parent choice and program participation fosters socioeconomic diversity within community early learning programs, this in-depth case study examined two high-quality, socioeconomically diverse community early education program sites operating in Baltimore City. Key findings of this study include, (1) Despite their shared…

Education markets have spread worldwide over the past few decades. Frequently, the expansion of markets in education is presented by their promoters as a means to improve the opportunities of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged students. However, the evidence available shows that market-oriented policies that enhance competition and choice…

Learner migration, which occurs worldwide, is the voluntary and intentional movement of learners from 1 school to another school of their choice in order to secure better learning opportunities. The study reported on here contributes to the literature on learner migration by focusing on the inequalities caused by racism, benefits and challenges…

Access to private schools and public charter schools might improve parent and student satisfaction through competitive pressures and improved matches between educators and students. Using ordered probit regression analysis and a nationally representative sample of 13,436 students in the United States in 2016, I compare satisfaction levels of…

Educational decision-making is a complex process where individual factors such as how adolescents think about and evaluate themselves could play an important role. In this study, (N = 84), we combined behavioral and neural correlates of self-concept and self-esteem to examine what characterizes adolescents who struggle with educational…

Despite several charter schools specifically targeting improving students' noncognitive skills, the majority of charter school literature focuses on cognitive learning outcomes. Using behavioral measures as proxies for noncognitive outcomes, I find that North Carolina charter schools have no effect on tardiness or unexcused absences but are…

School choice has received national attention in the United States from policymakers and professionals as a way to improve parents' social capital and subsequent academic outcomes for adolescents. However, limited work has empirically tested the links among school choice, social capital, and academic outcomes, particularly for high school…

Market-based policies, especially school vouchers, are expanding rapidly and shifting students out of traditional public schools. This article broadens, deepens, and updates prior critiques of the free market logic in five ways. First, although prior articles have pointed to some of the conditions necessary for efficient market functioning, I…