Studies of charter closure rates typically focus on year-to-year closures. While important for researchers, such studies provide little guidance to families seeking to understand the risk of enrolling their child in a charter school. That is because studies determining how many schools close each year provide no information on how long the school…

School vouchers, a school choice policy that allows students and families to use public funds to fully or partially pay the cost of attending private schools, became a major area of policy debate once again during Betsy DeVos's tenure as United States Secretary of Education. Recent evaluations have found negative impacts of vouchers on academic…

Policy makers in California intend to provide free preschool to all 4-year-olds solely within public schools by 2026, becoming the nation's second largest single pre-K program in the United States after Head Start. This initiative builds on the state's existing Transitional Kindergarten (TK) option that has served a modest share of 4-year-olds…

This report is the result of a year-long exploration of the effects of charter schools and the issues that surround them. Each of its eleven issues-based stories tells what the Network for Public Education (NPE) has learned not only from research, but also from talking with parents, community members, teachers, and school leaders around the nation…

For all the national and even international debate about the state of American education, public schooling in the U.S. is still a local matter--and the school district remains its hub. As administrators know, there's nothing abstract about the process of getting millions of students into their seats, assuring they receive the instruction they're…

Does school choice enhance the ability of school districts to raise revenue? School districts use charter and magnet schools to attract and retain students, but does choice improve the odds for school districts seeking increased taxing authority at the polls? If those parents who choose schools are attentive to district policies, then increasing…

Some researchers believe that collaboration between schools and community stakeholders--including families, educators, community organizations, and businesses--is the key to improving public education. However, broad and inclusive community-school partnerships are rare. Instead, we frequently hear about friction between communities and their…

This article reports on the result of a study written by researchers at the RAND Corp. According to the report, California's education system is lagging on nearly every measurable standard of quality, from funding to teachers to student achievement. The comprehensive, 258-page study offers a sobering analysis of the decline of a state education…

Disenchantment with 1980s school reform progress has produced school choice--the get-tough, marketplace approach to school improvement. Choice proposals in California fit two categories: interdistrict plans and intradistrict plans. The latter is already a common option featuring open enrollment and management and continuation schools. Two sidebars…

Discusses current issues in the funding of charter schools: (1) inter-district inequalities; (2) intra-district inequalities; (3) inadequate spending; and (4) special needs funding. Explores four additional issues related to the core identity of charter schools and the nature of their students. Devotes extra attention to charter schools in…

The Reason Foundation commissioned a survey of 800 registered voters in California to determine attitudes about education and education reform. School choice was a major topic of the survey. Support for school choice was strong as was disappointment with public schools. Across different demographic groups, respondents supported the idea of school…

Findings of a study that investigated the feasibility of educational vouchers for California education and their budgetary impact are presented in this paper. In a survey of 300 parents in the Los Angeles Unifies School District with children under the age of 16 who do or will attend public schools, 52 percent said that they would use a $2,600…

This paper asserts that California's system of education funding is rife with waste. A state commission found that the system was "convoluted--driving up administrative costs, diverting attention from educational concerns, and depriving the public of readily accessible, comparative information." The paper suggests that the California…

This handbook summarizes the probable effects of California's school-voucher initiative on public spending for K-12 education. The Parental Choice in Education Initiative (Proposition 174) was rejected by voters in the November 2, 1993, election. It sought to establish a system of annual vouchers, funded by public tax dollars, that elementary and…

The advantages of a voucher system for California's schools are discussed. Desirable consequences of such a system include: (1) equalization of state financial support; (2) financing of religious schools; and (3) parents' ability to choose the school their children will attend. (CJ)