The issue of social segregation in schools has seen a recent resurgence of interest--in the US, UK and internationally--as the debate rages on about whether policies that expand families' freedom to choose amongst schools encourage divergence or convergence in the types of pupil different schools admit. Most attention has been focussed on…

Public school choice sounds egalitarian, but questions of funding and equity raise the possibility of an excuse for racial segregation. Questions what will happen to equality as well as to quality in public education if proponents of school choice succeed in shifting revenues away from poor schools. (MLF)

The Praeger Handbook of American High Schools contains entries that explore the topic of secondary schools in the United States. Entries are arranged alphabetically and cover topics as varied as assessment to the history of the American high school, from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to gay and straight student alliances, from the No…

This study presents new findings comparing public and private high schools using top-quality data from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS), a long-term research project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. The ELS project tracks individual data on thousands of students, allowing researchers to conduct much better analyses than are…

Those who favor expansion of consumer choice in education claim that competition would force schools to improve. Critics claim that it would sort students by race and class. A competitive market will provide what consumers demand, yet neither side has empirical evidence on such consumer preferences to back up their claims. This paper offers such…

This collection of papers focuses on how to overcome challenges related to economic and racial school segregation through public school choice. The first section presents "Report of the Task Force" (the importance of school integration, overcoming challenges to integration, and case studies in integration). It also includes additional comments by…

Three articles examine whether school choice will undermine the common culture. The first remembers the author's own historical and literary educational canon. The second worries more about the current crop of state tests than the effects of school choice. The third predicts that choice is less harmful to the culture than are the effects of…

Examines the implications of unevenly distributed minority pupils and the Dutch choice system for policies on ethnic segregation, based on a sample of 27 municipalities serving 23% of all Dutch primary school pupils. Over one-third of all municipalities take no ameliorative action. When a school's minority enrollment exceeds 50-60%, the Dutch…

This study compares segregation levels in Milwaukee public schools and in private schools participating in the Milwaukee voucher program. Using a segregation index that measures the difference between the percent of students in a school who are white and the percentage of school-age children in the greater metro area who are white, it finds that…

Differences in disciplinary climate, academic demands, and student behavior make a difference in student achievement in all American high schools. (Author)

Explores de facto school segregation in Hartford (Connecticut) and reviews the Sheff v. O'Neill decision, in which the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the combination of de facto racial segregation and class segregation deprived students of substantially equal educational opportunity. A controlled choice approach is proposed to address…

Examining the widespread claims that private schools have high segregation levels and vouchers will lead to greater segregation, this study finds that both assertions are empirically unsupportable. Private schools participating in Cleveland's voucher program are much less segregated than Cleveland's public schools. This means that students using…

Any "choice" plan that promotes vouchers could weaken the public education system and lead to racial, economic, and social isolation of children. Further, letting parents choose their child's school will not qualitatively enhance parental involvement. Rather, increased parental participation should be promoted through the PTA, tutoring,…

A system of completely equal treatment of state and religious denominational elementary schools has existed in the Netherlands since 1920 and is firmly rooted in previous centuries of Dutch history. Development of this "pillarized" educational system is traced and discussed in relation to situations in South Africa and in countries with…

The issues of parochial school participation, transportation finance, information dissemination, rural school participation, and racial and economic segregation are examined in the context of current educational voucher proposals. (SK)