Driven by a desire to improve academic outcomes and transform "failing" schools, governments around the world have often turned to the development of new forms of state-funded school. This paper looks at three such instances of the introduction of new forms of schooling, within three urban localities (academy schools in London; charter…

New York State's system of public elementary and secondary schools is in steep decline, but it is salvageable. The roots of its problems pre-date the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, but the system's response to that challenge accelerated discontent with the schools and harmed students. The damage of those years will not be undone if…

In almost any conversation about accountability for private schools, accountability for public schools is assumed. This is a dangerous myth. By assuming that the edifice that states and the federal government have created over the past several decades actually holds schools accountable, school choice advocates immediately find themselves in an…

School buses may be a critical education policy lever, breaking the link between schools and neighborhoods and facilitating access to school choice. Yet little is known about the commute for bus riders, including the average length of the bus ride or whether long commutes harm academic outcomes. We begin to fill this gap using data from New York…

Drawing upon Aihwa Ong's concept of 'neoliberalism as exception', this paper explores how the education authority in Shanghai capitalises on neoliberal knowledge, techniques and logics to address local challenges. Through the creation of 'new high-quality schools' that is accompanied by a new assessment system, the authority hopes to persuade…

It has been a key goal to achieve equity in education in Australia and Norway over the last 50 years. This article offers a historical case-oriented comparative analysis of the promotion of equity in education in these 2 countries. While equity in education is primarily understood as students' learning outcomes in national and international tests,…

School choice reforms are increasingly common across the U.S. This symposium summarizes and presents the most recent research on the social effects of private school choice programs and public charter schools. All three papers consider heterogeneity in effects that can and should inform policymaking. The first paper, "Charter School Entry and…

The ideology of cost effectiveness is altering the nature of American educational policy. The impact of this belief system is measured in the literature, and in practice, by following vast sums of private money. The public nature of fiscal policymaking in US education is transformed, and policymakers throughout the nation are mesmerized, by false…

Challenging the popular perception that the free market can objectively ameliorate inequality and markedly improve student academic achievement, this book examines the overly positivistic rhetoric surrounding charter schools. Taking a multifocal approach, this book examines how charter schools reproduce inequality in public education. By linking…

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among…

The article analyses the (third) Coleman Report on private and public schools. The report scrutinises the relationship between private and public schools and shows that private school students show better academic achievement. Coleman concluded that these findings provided a strong argument in favour of public financial support for private…

Educational choice programs--defined broadly as programs that provide parents with financial aid to help their children opt out of the traditional public school system--are a hallmark of meaningful educational reform. Yet despite widespread news coverage of such programs, polls show most Americans are unfamiliar with how educational choice…

We use quantile treatment effects estimation to examine the consequences of the random-assignment New York City School Choice Scholarship Program (NYCSCSP) across the distribution of student achievement. Our analyses suggest that the program had negligible and statistically insignificant effects across the skill distribution. In addition to…

We utilize state data of nearly 1.7 million students in Ohio to study a specific sector of online education: K-12 schools that deliver most, if not all, education online, lack a brick-and-mortar presence, and enroll students full-time. First, we explore e-school enrollment patterns and how these patterns vary by student subgroups and geography.…

Offering contributions from international leaders in the field, this volume builds on empirically informed meta-analyses to foreground relationship-based aspects of parental involvement in children's education and learning. Chapters explore how factors including parent-child communication, cultural and parental expectations, as well as…