As school choice policies continue to become more prevalent nationally and internationally, educational scholars are interested in understanding how parents make school selection decisions. Existing studies of parental educational decision-making mainly explore how white, middle-class parents make educational decisions. There is limited research…

This study looks at the impact of using a voucher on college enrollments and on degree attainment. The data covers a span of 21 years, which allows the ability to record college enrollment and attainment up to seven years after a student's anticipated date of high-school graduation and observe students' college-going behavior even if their…

For decades, social theorists have posited--and descriptive accounts have shown--that students isolated by both social class and ethnicity suffer extreme deprivations that limit the effectiveness of equal-opportunity interventions. Even educational programs that yield positive results for moderately disadvantaged students may not prove beneficial…

The "Schooling in America Survey" is a national project, commissioned by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and conducted by Braun Research, Inc. (BRI). The author and his colleagues methodology is in line with polling industry standards. A total of 1,000 telephone interviews were completed from April 1 to 8, 2013, by means of both…

This paper analyzes the impact of voucher design on student sorting in the application and enrollment phases of parental choice. More specifically, it investigates whether there are feasible ways of designing vouchers that can reduce or eliminate student sorting in these phases. Much of the existing literature investigates the question of…

The purpose of "Focus" is to provide coverage of poverty-related research, events, and issues, and to acquaint a large audience with the work of the Institute for Research on Poverty by means of short essays on selected pieces of research. This issue features articles drawn from four of the conference papers presented at the September 2007 IRP…