To date, there is a paucity of research that examines differences between charter schools that operate in suburban and nonsuburban contexts. This article examines whether students in suburban charter schools perform better or worse than their counterparts in traditional public schools or students in urban charter schools. Boasting the largest and…

The purpose of this study is to examine the school selection process of parents whose children attended an urban school district in Northern California. Like numerous urban school districts across the United States, the district highlighted in this study also encountered students exiting its schools for the past decade. The findings shared in this…

In cities where public charter schools serve a large share of students, the costs of ongoing sector divisions and hostility across district and charter lines fall squarely on students and families. Exercising choice and accessing good schools in "high-choice cities" can be difficult for many families, especially some of the most…

Prior research suggests that parents of Hispanics, English learners, and students living in poverty exercise school choice less frequently than other parents, which may be a factor in the resegregation of public schools. This quasi-experimental, causal-comparative design tests whether ethnicity, language dominance, or socioeconomic status of the…

Public school choice has become a common feature in American school districts. Any potential benefits that could be derived from these policies depend heavily on the ability of parents and students to make informed and educated decisions about their school options. We examined the readability and complexity of school-choice guides across a sample…

For all the national and even international debate about the state of American education, public schooling in the U.S. is still a local matter--and the school district remains its hub. As administrators know, there's nothing abstract about the process of getting millions of students into their seats, assuring they receive the instruction they're…

California legislators swiftly passed a budget bill last week aimed at sheltering school busing dollars from a midyear budget cut many districts and advocates said particularly hurt rural school systems, along with urban districts with desegregation plans. While the measure, which Gov. Jerry Brown was expected to sign into law, would restore $248…

Purpose: In this essay, we examine the racial politics of education in the six decades after "Brown". We consider the state of educational policy in an era in which market reform advocates often invoke the spirit of the "Brown" decision even as the Supreme Court has largely vacated the legal framework provided by…

Increased school choice is leading to enrollment patterns that do not reflect attendance in the neighborhood school. The impact of this increased mobility on scholastic achievement is still undecided, in part because of the difficulty in untangling compositional and contextual effects on educational outcomes. This article uses data from the Los…

This dissertation captures the intricacies of high school counseling by utilizing the social science research method, Portraiture (Lightfoot & Hoffman, 1997). This method allowed the author to document how two Counselors of Color at one inner city high school in Los Angeles, Quetzcoatal Academy (QA) interacted with and inspired Latina/o…

Everyone knows that student achievement often suffers when children and families move, leaving behind their school and neighborhood, yet, in urban districts like Los Angeles, mobility is now encouraged by the development of mixed-markets of diverse schools, including charter, pilot, and magnet schools in. Over 60 new school facilities were opened…

In June 2007, the Supreme Court limited the tools that school districts could use to voluntarily integrate schools. In the aftermath of the decision, educators around the country have sought models of successful plans that would also be legal. One such model may be Berkeley Unified School District's (BUSD) plan. Earlier this year, the California…

The purpose of this study is to investigate why parents choose parochial schools, whether parochial-school parents are likely to favor school vouchers, and what factors lie behind their support for vouchers. To this end, this study gives special attention to parents' personal religiosity. The sample of parents was taken from five large Protestant…

It is an unfortunate reality that not all students successfully navigate the path from urban community colleges to four-year institutions. Despite the apparent obstacles and odds, some students are successful. This article is the equivalent of reading a book by starting with the last chapter and then reading the rest of the book to find out why…

As the high-profile Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) network of schools continues to expand, KIPP leaders are taking a close look at student attrition amid arguments from critics that the loss of students at some of those public schools of choice is alarmingly high. Attrition rates at a few KIPP schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, in…