Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos wants to privatize American education using charter schools, vouchers, tax credit scholarships, education savings accounts, and portable federal funds. Court and legislative decisions are facilitating these ends. Understanding the school choice agenda and its fiscal, academic, and legal aspects can help…

It sounds tempting, especially in tough fiscal times: Hand over all the responsibility for food service management to a private company promising to provide nutritious and appetizing meals, keep up with increasingly complex regulations, and perhaps even make a profit. Privatization, or outsourcing, has worked well for some districts for years, but…

This annual report, in its seventh edition, found that Education Management Organizations (EMOs) tend to focus on managing charter primary schools and on enrolling relatively large numbers of students in those schools. Fifty-nine EMOs operate in 24 states and the District of Columbia, enrolling some 239,766 students. The report is the most…

More and more, private for-profit and non-profit organizations are involved in schools. No longer limited to support services like transportation and food services, companies are providing tutoring, directing classroom instruction and managing public and charter schools. School reform has raised the stakes for schools and students, asking for…