Across Canada, school districts have been confronting a backlash to their equity and social justice initiatives. Critics of public education have been arguing that the solution to these controversies is to increase school choice. Using several examples from the United States, this paper argues that the endgame of these strategies is to undermine…

Milton Friedman is widely considered the intellectual father of the school choice movement. While Friedman deserves much credit, Father Virgil Blum stands out as an influential figure in the nascent school choice movement. Using archival research, this paper examines Blum's contributions to the movement. From his 1954 doctoral dissertation, which…

May 17, 2024 marks the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled segregated schools were "inherently unequal." At the time, North Carolina was one of 17 states that enforced de jure segregation, that is, segregation by law. The state of North Carolina and the school districts within…

This dissertation utilizes a qualitative approach to research, guided by policy analysis and evaluative case studies. The purpose of the study is to examine what information is made available to parents regarding their rights, and the rights of their child, when utilizing a voucher or education savings account to attend a private school. The…

Privatization of education has expanded dramatically worldwide in the last two decades, and Turkey is no exception. It is seen that the developments affecting the transformation of public services began with the implementation of neoliberal education policies, especially after the 1980s. These policies have led to a significant transformation in…

China has witnessed significant growth in the number of children affected by internal rural-urban migration. These children predominantly suffer from educational inequalities. Most relevant studies have primarily attributed such inequalities to "hukou"-based exclusion. However, the active agency of rural migrant parents in their…

School choice has influenced several educational reforms in the US and across the world in the last decades. These reforms have often promoted school autonomy, parental choice, and competition between schools to improve quality and equity. Whether those reforms work in practice is well examined, but the roles of policy design such as the extent to…

This authoritative book examines the long-standing campaign that resulted in today's school voucher policies. Advocates of private school vouchers promulgated a vision of service to low-income families, students of color, and other marginalized student populations. Vouchers were sold as a way to advance civil rights. But as voucher policies grew…

Despite controversies surrounding faith-based schooling, religious schools continue to play a prominent role in numerous education systems. Nonetheless, empirical research on nonstate religious schools operating in a market context remains limited and fragmented. On the one hand, while religious and cultural studies investigate the evolution of…

This article explores the relationship between school choice, student mobility and school segregation in Barcelona. The case of Barcelona is particularly interesting because the school admissions policy combines a particular design of catchment area with a significant level of choice options. We work on students and school register datasets for…

Historically, debates about educational choice have wrestled with big, unresolved tensions that lie at the heart of American life, having to do with individual rights, community obligations, public and private interests, religious freedoms, and more. But in recent years, school reformers have tended to talk about choice as though it referred only…

Educational grievances made educational democratisation an important issue in the 1980s and 1990s during South Korea's democratic consolidation. Educational democratisers sought to address these through greater freedom and autonomy for teachers, students and parents combined with teacher unionisation. Some of the excesses of the highly…

This paper illustrates the influence of a new national assignment system (NSAS) on Chilean middle-class advantage. This system was designed to increase educational equity by changing the previous school admission "rules" that were prejudicial against low-income students. We use Bourdieu's conceptual tools, drawing on concepts of capitals…

The availability of public funding for private schools, in both primary and secondary education, has become a common feature in a number of OECD countries. The expansion of public subsidies for privately owned schools has consequences that go far beyond the involvement of private actors in the provision of education. These include deepening forms…

A provision of India's Right to Education Act requires private schools to enrol 25% of children from 'disadvantaged' and 'economically weaker' backgrounds. Described as a unique public-private partnership, this policy has been widely debated for its promotion of private actors in ensuring equity and access to education. Within this controversial…