Despite upwards of 100,000 gifted students possibly being educated at home, research regarding this population is limited. The literature on gifted homeschooling includes topics such as motivations for homeschooling, modalities of instruction, and student achievement and social-emotional wellness. Recommendations for expanding the literature and…

The school-choice landscape in the United States is undergoing a rapid transformation, as states increasingly enact a new form of vouchers called Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). Unlike earlier voucher programs, which generally allowed subsidies only for private school tuition, ESAs represent a radically expansive--and potentially very…

Safety remains a key concern for parents and education policy makers. Homeschooling opponents argue that child abusers use homeschooling to isolate and harm their children while public school teachers and administrators, as mandatory reporters, reduce child maltreatment. Supporters of homeschooling argue that public schools expose children to…

In this first installment of the series on state-level policy and microschooling, the authors explain Idaho's recent legislative debate over two competing approaches to supporting the creation of small learning communities, known as microschools. Idaho's strong homeschooling community and its low-enrollment rural districts create political…

In this report, the author explains the small-schools environment in New York City. Prior to the pandemic, the Big Apple had a small but growing microschool and learning pod community. New York City's frequent school closures throughout 2020 and 2021 caused many families to look more closely at these education options. New York State's stifling…

Recent headlines describing the national drop in public school enrollment suggest that this is a shocking crisis brought on or worsened by the pandemic. However, Abbie Cohen argues that the current enrollment decline should not be a surprise. The underlying causes have festered for decades. Among these causes is the tension between the different…

America has a long history of small-school environments, such as one-room schoolhouses and homeschools. But in recent years, other models have developed, giving students more intimate settings for learning and enabling their families to play a larger role in their schooling. Microschools are a leading example of this growing sector that also…

Across OECD countries, education choice is proliferating as parents seek and governments permit choice both inside and outside public education systems. The movement of students out of the common public school, however, varies significantly across jurisdictions and sociodemographic characteristics such as race and class. This variation in…

Homeschooling has witnessed an upsurge in the United States since the movement for school choice gained momentum in the 1990s. Most research on homeschooling has been on non-representative samples of median-income white Americans, making it difficult for policymakers to accept its reliability. In addition, homeschoolers now include other ethnic…

Since the Every Student Succeeds Act became law, states have taken advantage of opportunities to engage the arts more broadly in education policy -- from including the arts in STEM education to using the arts as a strategy to meet the needs of underserved youth. At the same time, many states' policy agendas address school choice, with ongoing…

This study reports the results of a survey conducted with a set of "hybrid homeschool" leaders (principals or directors) from around the United States who were asked to describe (1) how their families categorize themselves (as homeschoolers, or as members of private schools); (2) the ways in which their schools operate in terms of…

The "Brown" v. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court brought hopes of long-denied freedom to Black communities and their inhabitants. However, implementation of Brown ushered in more misery than a mandate for equality. The "Brown" v. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court brought hopes of long-denied…

EdChoice and Braun Research conducted its annual survey to gauge the opinions of the American public (N = 1,209) and school parents (N = 1,238) on topics like the state of K-12 education, their schooling preferences, choice reforms and the current pandemic--to name a few. Both survey samples are nationally representative of those respective…

Unless otherwise noted, data and charts in this report are based on surveys conducted between October 12, 2021 and January 16, 2022 among a sample of 998 special education parents and 3,716 non-special needs parents. The interviews were administered online and the data were weighted to approximate a target sample of Parents based on gender,…

The goal of this brief is to examine the extent to which different school choice policies have been implemented in rural communities, identify the barriers, and provide recommendations for policymakers looking to expand access to school choice in rural communities. The school choice policies discussed in this brief include: (1) Charter schools;…