Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane have gathered a diverse group of scholars to examine the shifting federal role in education across the presidential administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. While the administrations were vastly different, one thing remained constant: an ongoing and significant expansion of the federal role in…

The Louisiana Department of Education has three core beliefs: belief in children, belief in educators, and belief in family. Louisiana's charter schools embody these key beliefs. Charter schools give families an opportunity to choose the school environment that is best suited to meet the needs of their children and put educational decisions in the…

Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using what many call a "portfolio strategy." Others call it "reinvention," a "21st century approach," or "relinquishment." By whatever name, it generally means that districts negotiate performance agreements with some mix of…

The 2016 Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI) is the fifth release of an annual compilation of data on the condition of K-12 school choice in the geographical areas served by the nation's 100 largest school districts. The ECCI captures information on: (1) the extent of choice; (2) the characteristics of the process by which parents and…

The promise of quality education is a cornerstone of American culture. Why, then, is this not the experience of every child in our nation? In the 1990s, the charter school movement began under the auspices of an avenue to address the disillusionment of education policy, the sense of powerlessness felt by parents and teachers, and the disparities…

Background: Purpose: This analysis considers the emergence, evidentiary basis, and potential of parent trigger policies. In particular, we focus on the policy, political and social circumstances in which parent trigger legislation emerged in California, the efficacy of the school improvement levers on which it draws, and the underlying assumptions…

The 46th Annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes toward the Public Schools reveals that Americans say they know a lot more this year about the Common Core State Standards than they indicated a year ago, and they like it a lot less. Americans also say local school boards should have the greatest influence in deciding what is taught in the…

Homeschooling is controversial for a variety of reasons. One concern is whether families are sufficiently equipped to serve students with disabilities. We investigate this issue by assessing parental satisfaction with the special education services that their child is receiving in various educational sectors (e.g., homeschool, traditional public,…

This 2015 annual report shares many of the accomplishments achieved by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in 2015 including the celebration of their 10th anniversary. Among other achievements, the report highlights: (1) At the end of 2015 Congress and the President agreed to an $80 million increase in support for the federal Charter…

This is a section of "Research-Based Options for Education Policymaking," a multipart brief that takes up a number of important policy issues and identifies policies supported by research. Each section focuses on a different issue, and its recommendations to policymakers are based on the latest scholarship. A founding premise of charter…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and implementing regulations maintain requirements for State educational agencies (SEAs), local educational agencies (LEAs) to prepare and disseminate report cards that provide information on State, LEA, and school performance and…

The newly created Conservative Education Reform Network (CERN) at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) invited a group of conservative education thinkers to sketch policy proposals that they would like to see in a new education agenda. The only requirement was that they offer suggestions that would complement the traditional conservative…

The ninth annual Boston Opportunity Agenda Report Card looks at how the pandemic has affected many of the indicators used to track how Boston students are doing in education from early childhood through adulthood, as well as tracking the landscape of the Opportunity Agenda's efforts to strengthen the education pipeline. This report card contains…

School choice has gained considerable popularity in recent decades as governments struggle to improve quality and reduce the cost of education by increasing competition among schools and decreasing the level of bureaucracy (Chubb & Moe, 1990). The trend towards reorganization of public service allocation for education has been a feature of…

In January 2014, as part of a multicity study, researchers from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) met with a dozen parents in Detroit to learn about their experiences with education in the city. Parents struggle to navigate the city's complex education marketplace. A lack of information, confusing paperwork, and transportation gaps…