In recent years, policy makers and educators in the U.S. have begun to show considerable interest in the concept of weighted student funding as a means of financing primary and secondary schools. Weighted student funding (WSF) has three main elements. Money follows students on a per student basis to the schools they attend, the per student amount…

By the mid-twentieth century, the public comprehensive high school was often regarded as the most democratic form of secondary education. Fifty years later it was under challenge. New educational markets emphasized school diversity and parental choice rather than social equity through common schooling. The comprehensives faced many criticisms,…

A National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) report addresses the questions "What have conservative foundations done with their grant dollars to promote concepts of privatizing public education through "school choice," primarily linked to school vouchers? What were their strategies in providing resources to an array of conservative…

This article addresses the ongoing conflicts over the effectiveness of school choice in America's educational system. After discussing the ideological foundations of the school choice movement, I analyze four controversies where the research done to evaluate school choice programs was hotly debated and inconclusive. The central holding of the…

This article is a policy analysis that considers how the policy option of using federal programs to promote educational choice was proposed and debated in the 106th and 107th Congresses. This debate was part of the reauthorization of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) between 1999 and 2001. Over the past 20 years,…

The long-sustained effort of conservatives and their think tanks and media outlets to win support for school choice, market forces, and privatization schemes in education is paying off. But it is encountering steady resistance from the public education establishment and its supporting teachers' unions. Actions, reactions, strategies, and the…

This article provides an updated analysis of the institutional and organizational landscape surrounding the advocacy of and opposition to vouchers and other forms of school choice over the past decade at federal/national, state, and local levels. The politics of choice grew far more complex during the 1990s, with Republican control of Congress and…

The present research was undertaken to identify sociocultural variables that influence whether Russian-speaking parents living in Estonia choose Russian, Estonian, or bilingual (Russian and Estonian) instruction for their children. To examine which sociocultural variables are related to parents' choice of language of instruction, 346…

This study investigates the relationship between parents and politics. In part one, the effect of having school-aged children on parents' political outcomes is examined. Do the resource constraints associated with child-rearing depress participation, or does the presence of children increase activity? One finds that parents are more active in…

"From the Courtroom to the Classroom" examines recent developments pertaining to school desegregation in the United States. As the editors note, it comes at a time marked by a "general downplaying of race and ethnicity as criteria for the allocation of public resources, as well as a weakening of the political forces that support…

Discusses eight myths about school choice and attempts to settle some of the main arguments on the basis of experiences in Minnesota and elsewhere. Reviews some of the variety of established choice policies and describes the components of an effective program. (SR)

Reviews the status of educational choice in a number of countries, including the newly independent states of Eastern Europe and the newly united Germany. Sets forth the requirements for inclusion in a choice program if it is to be effective and equitable. (SR)

This chapter is organized as follows. The first section examines the evolving state and federal role in education and the implications of an expanded federal role on the structure of the educational system. It pays particular attention to how the debate on the causes and solutions to school reform has shifted and the impact this has had on school…

The present article, a cross-case analysis, analyzes one aspect of the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that has generated conflict between the U.S. Department of Education and the federal court system. The conflicts arose between the courts' oversight of desegregation and the implementation of the public school choice…

Homeschooling has developed from a small, isolated, parent-led effort to a vibrant national movement to lobby for and legalize K-12 education at home in all 50 states. Although a majority of homeschool families are Evangelical Christians, the others come from a variety of religious and nonreligious backgrounds, giving homeschooling a broad…