As more states adopt universal education savings account (ESA) programs, analysts have declared that the "final frontier" of school choice has been reached. Another choice that parents might want to make and policymakers should support as an intermediate option between private school and homeschooling is partnering with their local…

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…

This poll was conducted between November 6-November 18, 2021 among a sample of 435 Black School Parents. The interviews were conducted online. Results based on the Black School Parents sample have a measure of precision of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points. Among the key findings are: (1) Black parents' overall support for school vouchers…

In 2014, Florida became the second state to enact education savings accounts (ESAs), a relatively new form of educational choice that empowers families to utilize state funding to customize K-12 schooling options beyond just private school tuition, which is all that's allowable under a more traditional voucher program. Now called the Gardiner…

This study explores four instances where parental choice has been employed as a legal "circuit breaker": (a) First Amendment Establishment Clause cases related to public funding, (b) Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection cases regarding race-conscious student assignment, (c) Title IX regulations concerning single-sex education, and (d) a…

Background: In contrast to the top-down government-designated school choice programmes in many countries, e.g. in the UK and USA in particular, school choice in the Chinese context is a bottom-up movement initiated by parents and is characterised by the payment of a substantial "choice fee" to the preferred school, and by competition by…

Special education and parental school choice are two of the most controversial issues in K-12 education in the United States. In certain places, especially Milwaukee, Wisconsin, those two sensitive education concerns intersect in ways that prompt regular interest on the part of policy makers, advocates, the media, and the public at large. In this…

This third edition expands coverage on such topics as the law and students with disabilities, confidentiality, sexual harassment, student searches and tuition vouchers. It also includes some new topics such as bullying, copyright law, and the law and the internet. Both public and nonpublic school educators are aware that courts, over the last…

This report, designed as one component of the comprehensive evaluation of the Milwaukee school system being conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP), is based on focus group conversations with low-income families whose children attend Milwaukee public and private schools. The report seeks to elucidate the demand side of school…

We apply propensity score matching to the estimation of differential school effectiveness between the publicly funded private sector and the public sector in a sample of 26 countries. This technique allows us to distinguish between school choice and school effectiveness processes and thus to account for selectivity issues involved in the…

Despite the promise of equal educational opportunities for all, most public schools in the townships of South Africa have remained poorly funded and thus have become dysfunctional. As a result most poor parents from townships have started to transfer their children to schools with better resources and education facilities in the suburban areas.…

This paper uses Milwaukee Public School (MPS) data to describe trends in state aid and spending during the time that school choice has existed. The study uses data from MPS budget documents, focusing on changes in state aid to MPS and in overall MPS spending. These data refute claims that the financing of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program…

Discusses the impact of school choice on educational outcomes, examining: whether there is any evidence that the various alternatives to traditional public schools are delivering education in a fundamentally different and more efficient form; what the equity consequences and demographic implications are for enhanced school choice; and how enhanced…

An education voucher system would be more egalitarian than the existing tax code and would force the educational establishment to pursue needed reforms. The current property tax deduction system favors the rich, but the voucher system would offer the same relief to every taxpayer regardless of income and even would provide assistance to poor,…

Wisconsin's Open Enrollment program, which policymakers hope will improve educational performance by introducing competition to public schools, allows students to enroll in any district in the state, provided space is available. First implemented in the 1998-1999 school year, the program now includes 1% of all Wisconsin K-12 students. In its first…