This paper uses school choice policy as an example to demonstrate how local actors adopt, mediate, translate, and reformulate "choice" as neo-liberal rhetoric informing education reform. Complex processes exist between global policy about school choice and the local practice of school choice. Based on the theoretical sensibility of…

In this paper we explore the relationship between students' residential location and participation in Milwaukee's large, widely available private school voucher program. We are interested in one overarching question: do voucher schools disproportionately draw students from better public schools and city neighborhoods, or do they draw students most…

Background: High school choice policies attempt to improve the educational outcomes of poor and minority students by allowing access to high schools beyond neighborhood boundaries. These policies assume that given a choice, families will be able to select a school that supports their child's learning and promotes educational attainment. However,…

The excerpts presented in this article begin in the 1980s and detail the origins of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which today enables more than 25,000 low-income students to attend more than 100 Milwaukee private schools. (This article was written with Lisa Frazier Page.)

This quantitative report presents parents' views of school choice, local accountability, and academy schools. The survey was conducted in December 2014 and January 2015 with a representative sample of 1,005 parents of children aged 5-18 in England. Samples selected included 50% male and 50% female respondents from across England. Other variables…

Intra-district open enrollment policies are increasingly implemented as a means of expanding children's educational opportunities and promoting greater racial integration in urban schools. However, racial segregation continues to endure in many choice-oriented urban school districts, to the extent that schools are often more segregated than their…

A recent Pioneer Institute report written by Ken Ardon and Cara Stilling Candal, "Modeling Urban Scholarship Vouchers in Massachusetts," explores the viability of a school choice voucher program in the Commonwealth. Nationally, school choice has been shown to improve parent satisfaction and student achievement, reduce racial segregation,…

Islamic education of children is a common problem faced by Muslims living in western, European and other developed countries as minority. It can be due to a number of factors such as unavailability of Islamic schools at a particular location, lack of enough number of students to warrant opening a full-fledged Islamic school, curriculum legislated…

Researchers examined enrollment and family income data from the past 50 years at Catholic, other religious, and nonsectarian private elementary schools (that is, schools serving grades K-8). The study used data on families' incomes and elementary-school choices from the decennial census, Current Population Survey, U.S. Department of Education…

Charter schools have seen a nearly tripling in students, with approximately 3.1 million students enrolled in 2016-2017. As of 2017, 1 in 8 African American students attended a charter school in the United States. This article provides a conceptual introduction to a special issue on equity issues within the charter school movement, with a…

Georgia's 2012 Charter Schools Amendment was the first successful statewide school choice referendum in the United States. This amendment permitted the state to authorize new charter schools, thereby creating a way for charter creators to bypass local school boards. This study analyzes voting on this state constitutional amendment and finds that…

Racial segregation remains a persistent problem in U.S. schools. In this article, we examine how social psychological factors--in particular, individuals' perceptions of schools with varying demographic characteristics--may contribute to the ongoing structural problem of school segregation. We investigate the effects of school racial composition…

This article reports the findings of a study on the nature of parent-school engagement at an academically selective public high school in New South Wales, Australia. Such research is pertinent given recent policies of "choice" and decentralization, making a study of local stakeholders timely. The research comprised a set of interviews…

Many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries publish school rankings annually, based on the aggregated student performance of different schools in the (high-stakes) board examinations. The literature cites two reasons in favour of the public availability of information on school performance: first, the highly valued…

The marketization of K-12 education has led to an increase in school-based marketing efforts. Relatively little research, however, has examined how public schools market themselves, who is involved in marketing, and how these marketing efforts impact key stakeholders, including school administrators, teachers, students, and parents.We explore…