Findings of a study that examined parental reactions to the implementation of Minnesota's statewide open-enrollment program are presented in this paper. Data were derived from telephone interviews conducted with 162 parents at the end of the 1989-90 school year. A three-way multivariate research design with eight dependent variables was used to…

Findings of a study that examined school organizational change associated with the implementation of open enrollment in Minnesota are presented in this paper. Data were derived from mailed surveys completed by 126 principals at the end of the 1989-90 school year. A three-way multivariate research design with seven dependent variables was used to…

The kinds of school choice programs and the processes by which they became legalized in Minnesota are discussed in this paper. The first part reviews reasons for restructuring American schools. The second part describes how the Minnesota education system moved changed in the following areas: from a single delivery system to community education;…

Despite their common goal, reformers promoting school choice and those seeking ways to improve schools through more effective principal leadership have remained for the most part disconnected. This paper presents findings of a study that examined differences in teachers' ratings of effective principal leadership in magnet and nonmagnet schools in…

There is a need for a common educational core to satisfy the requirements for reproducing a democratic society. Although historically the common schools were couched in the rhetoric of a common educational experience, democratic localism tended to undermine the commonality through a large number of antidemocratic practices. However, recent decades…

This paper responds to the Bush Administration's opposition to including private schools in systems of subsidized choice, and argues that parental choice among public and private schools will promote tolerance and remedy social conflict. In view of President Bush's endorsement of the benign effects of competition, his insistence on an all-public…

This paper presents findings of a study that analyzed participation patterns and the movement of students and state funds in Ohio during the 1993-94 school year, the first year during which Ohio's interdistrict open-enrollment law was fully implemented. The theoretical framework for the study was drawn from economics and business theories of…

This study examined how eight rural, high-impact Minnesota school districts (defined as those losing or gaining a high percentage of student population due to school-choice implementation in fiscal year 1995) responded to school choice policy. Data from semistructured interviews with each district's superintendent were sorted and analyzed. In each…