This study uses fiscal data reported by traditional public school districts between 2000 and 2017 to generate descriptive estimates of the relationship between the local market share of independent charter schools and the finances of host school districts in twenty-one states. The research questions for the study are as follows: (1) On average,…

Education improvement has become a national imperative. Low graduation rates, standardized test failures, and overall success rates falling significantly behind in global competition have forced the dialogue towards alternatives to public education (Stewart, 2012). As the United States continues to trail other countries in educational success, it…

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…

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way that families and policymakers view K-12 education. Learning loss is having an outsized impact on students who were furthest from opportunity before the pandemic. And families are increasingly looking for new educational options for their children. For decades, access to educational options…

Classrooms across America have become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. Little attention has been paid to where minority teachers tend to be employed, what happens to minority teachers once they are employed, and to the role of the employing organizations in teacher staffing problems. The purpose of this quantitative comparative study…

In March 2020, the coronavirus shuttered schools across the United States and the world. In the first year of the pandemic, school systems faced difficult decisions about how to deliver instruction while maintaining the safety and wellbeing of students, families, faculty, and staff. As the months passed, the consequences from this public health…

This poll was conducted between September 23, 2023-September 27, 2023 among a sample of 1041 Teachers. The interviews were conducted online. Results based on the full survey have a measure of precision of plus or minus 3.08 percentage points. Among the key findings are: (1) Positive feelings about the direction of K-12 education fell sharply at…

School safety has been widely studied from the perspectives of administrators, teachers, and students in traditional education settings. However, parents' perceptions of school safety have been largely overlooked. Moreover, it is unknown how homeschool parents conceptualize safety in educational settings despite school safety being a known…

Few evaluations have focused on the supply and demand within the education marketplace in a school choice environment. Because traditional public schools are not subject to the same level of competitive pressures as private schools, we expect that measures of school quality--enrollment, academic achievement, and safety--will be more likely to…

The purpose of this study was to understand the contextual, school-level factors associated with the availability of arts education courses in the high schools of the United States. In the study, course offerings for a nationally representative sample of N = 940 high schools that were part of the National Center for Education Statistics High…

This quantitative dissertation examined the differences between young men and women's perceptions of mathematics and science identity, self-efficacy, and utility. There are gender norms and stereotypes that impact identity, self-efficacy, and perceived utility of mathematics and science. The secondary data analyzed were drawn from the follow-up…

The National Longitudinal School Database (NLSD) comprises three files, making up a near-census of all schools and districts in the United States from school years 1990-91 to 2019-20. The three files are the Public School File, Private School File, and District File. As evident by the titles, the first two files report data at the school-level for…

Transportation, or the lack thereof, can be a huge barrier to families exercising choice. Simply because a state authorizes the creation of charter schools or grants vouchers to families looking to send their children to private schools doesn't mean that those children will actually be able to attend those schools. They have to be able to get…

While the primary focus of ethical discussions involving school voucher programs has been on the relationship--and possible disconnect--between educational outcomes and profit motivations, recently this focus has shifted to the relationship between consumer sovereignty and racial segregation. A growing critique of private voucher and charter…

If free market advocates had total control over education policy, would the shared public system of education collapse? Would school choice revitalize schooling with its innovative force? With proliferating charters and voucher schemes, would the United States finally make a dramatic break with its past and expand parental choice? Those are not…