School Choice

Access issues are pivotal to almost all charter school tensions and debates. How well are these schools performing? Are they segregating and stratifying? Are they public and democratic? Are they fairly funded? Can apparent successes be scaled up? Answers to all these core questions hinge on how access to charter schools is shaped. This book describes the incentives and pressures on charter schools to restrict access and examines how charters navigate those pressures, explaining access-restricting practices in relation to the ecosystem within which charter schools are created. It also explains how charters have sometimes responded by resisting the pressures and sometimes by surrendering to them. The text presents analyses of 13 different types of practices around access, each of which shapes the school’s enrollment. The authors conclude by offering recommendations for how states and authorizers can address access-related inequities that arise in the charter sector. School’s Choice provides timely information on critical academic and policy issues that will come into play as charter school policy continues to evolve. Book Features: Examines how charter schools control who gains and retains access.Explores policies and practices that undermine equitable admission and encourage opportunity hoarding.Offers a set of policy recommendations at the state and federal level to address access-related issues.

Exploring the School Choice Universe: Evidence and Recommendations gives readers a comprehensive, complete picture of choice policies and issues. In doing so, it offers cross-cutting insights that are obscured when one looks only at single issue or a single approach to choice. The book examines choice in its various forms: charter schools, home schooling, online schooling, voucher plans that allow students to use taxpayer funds to attend private schools, tuition tax credit plans that provide a public subsidy for private school tuition, and magnet schools and other forms of public school intra- and interdistrict choice. It brings together some of the top researchers in the field, presenting a comprehensive overview of the best current knowledge of these important policies. The questions addressed in Exploring the School Choice Universe are of most importance to researchers and policy makers. What do choice programs actually do? What forms do they take? Who participates, and why? What are the funding implications? What are the results of different forms of school choice on outcomes that matter, like student performance, segregation, and competition effects? Do they affect teachers’ working conditions? Do they drive innovation? The contents of this book offer reason to believe that choice policies can further some educational goals. But they also suggest many reasons for caution. If choice policies are to be evidence-based, a re-examination is in order. The information, insights and recommendations facilitate a more nuanced understanding of school choice and provide the basis for designing sensible school choice reforms that can pursue a range of desirable outcomes.

An accessible guide to the major issues and arguments surrounding school choice. The issues and arguments surrounding school choice are sometimes hijacked to make political points about government control, democratic ideals, the public good, and privatization. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, David Garcia avoids partisan arguments to offer an accessible, objective, and comprehensive guide to school choice. He first outlines the different types of school choice, including home schooling, private schools, freedom-of-choice plans, magnet schools, charter schools, vouchers, and education savings accounts. Two themes emerge as particularly resonant in the American school choice debate: the long history of school desegregation, and debates over the roles and responsibilities of government. Is education a public good, for the collective benefit of society, or a private good, to benefit the individual? Garcia describes and evaluates the major arguments supporting school choice policies: the elimination of government bureaucracies, the introduction of competition into education through market forces, the promotion of parental choice, and the casting of school choice as a civil right. He examines the research on the effects of school choice and summarizes general trends. Finally, he considers how school choice policies are likely to evolve. He notes that the Trump administration's Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is an advocate for school choice, and that the administration's budget allocations signal a deliberate shift from long-standing federal policies that provide supplemental funding for low-income schools. Instead, new policies provide incentives for low-income families to leave public schools altogether through choice. This book will be an essential resource for participating in the debates that are sure to follow.

The Wiley Handbook of School Choice presents a comprehensive collection of original essays addressing the wide range of alternatives to traditional public schools available in contemporary US society. A comprehensive collection of the latest research findings on school choices in the US, including charter schools, magnet schools, school vouchers, home schooling, private schools, and virtual schools Viewpoints of both advocates and opponents of each school choice provide balanced examinations and opinions Perspectives drawn from both established researchers and practicing professionals in the U.S. and abroad and from across the educational spectrum gives a holistic outlook Includes thorough coverage of the history of traditional education in the US, its current state, and predictions for the future of each alternative school choice

Understanding School Choice in Canada provides a nuanced and theoretical overview of the formation and rise of school choice policies in Canada. Drawing on twenty years of work, Lynn Bosetti and Dianne Gereluk analyze the philosophical, historical, political, and social principles that underpin the formation and implementation of school choice policies in the provinces and territories. Bosetti and Gereluk offer theoretical frameworks for considering the parameters of school choice policies that are aligned and attentive to Canadian educational contexts. This robust overview successfully shifts the debate away from ideology in order to facilitate an understanding that the spectrum of school choice policy in Canada is a response to the varying political challenges in society at large. This book is essential reading for those who desire a deeper understanding of school choice policies in Canada.

In School Choice and the Future of American Democracy, Scott Franklin Abernathy shows what is lost in the school choice debate. Abernathy looks at parents as citizens who exert power over the educational system through everything from their votes on school budgets to their membership on school boards. Challenging the assumption that public schools will improve when confronted with market-based reforms, Abernathy examines the possibility that public schools will become more disconnected and isolated as civic life is privatized. Scott Abernathy takes up big questions and provides answers grounded in the complex reality of policy and politics. School Choice and the Future of American Democracy is a book written for those who understand that the world does not fit the simple explanations too often put forward. --Clarence Stone, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, and Research Professor, George Washington University Will school choice revive or eviscerate democratic processes and institutions? Will it narrow or exacerbate the range of educational inequities? This book takes several differently angled slices into these questions and draws intriguing answers. --Jeffrey R. Henig, Teachers College, Columbia University, and author of Rethinking School Choice: Limits of the Market Metaphor Through extensive research and refreshingly impartial analysis, Scott Abernathy probes how the use of market principles to reform public schools affects democratic citizenship. Treating citizens first and foremost as customers, he finds, threatens civic engagement and the well-being of schools, especially in the nation's neediest communities. This thoughtful and balanced appraisal is must-reading for those concerned about the future of American education and democracy. --Suzanne Mettler, Alumni Associate Professor, Syracuse University, and author of Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation Scott Franklin Abernathy is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota

What does the term 'school choice' mean to you? Opponents of parental choice have muddied its definition, misleading parents and educators and drawing public debate away from the core issues. In a book geared for anyone who wants to better understand this hotly contested topic, Merrifield clarifies the proposals in existence today, defining the key concepts related to choice. Arguing for a competitive education industry, he discusses policy and political strategy mistakes while suggesting corrections. This informative book covers government regulation issues, typical fallacies, diversity issues, private voucher initiatives, and experiments and empirical evidence about competition.

Public-private partnerships in education exist in various forms around the world, in both developed and developing countries. Despite this, and despite the importance of human capital for economic growth, systematic analysis has been limited and scattered, with most scholarly attention going to initiatives in the United States. This volume helps to fill the gap, bringing together recent studies on public-private partnerships in different parts of the world, including Asia, North and South America, and Europe. These initiatives vary significantly in form and structure, and "School Choice International" offers not only comprehensive overviews (including a cross-country analysis of student achievement) but also detailed studies of specific initiatives in particular countries. Two chapters compare public and private schools in India and the relative efficacy of these two sectors in providing education. Other chapters examine the use of publicly funded vouchers in Chile and Colombia, reporting promising results in Colombia but ambiguous findings in Chile; and student outcomes in publicly funded, privately managed schools (similar to American charter schools) in two countries: Colombia's "concession schools" and the United Kingdom's City Academies Programme. Taken together, these studies offer important insights for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers into the purposes, directions, and effects of different public-private educational initiatives. Contents of this book include: (1) Perspectives in Public-Private Partnerships in Education (Rajashri Chakrabarti and Paul E. Peterson); (2) Public-Private Partnerships and Student Achievement: a Cross-Country Analysis (Ludger Wossmann); (3) Mobilizing the Private Sector in the United States: a Theoretical Overview (Thomas J. Nechyba); (4) The Practice of Public-Private Partnerships (Norman LaRocque); (5) Public-Private Schools in Rural India (Karthik Muralidharan and Michael Kremer); (6) School-Sector Effects on Student Achievement in India (Geeta G. Kingdon); (7) School Vouchers in Colombia (Assisted by Eric Bettinger); (8) The Public-Private School Controversy in Chile (Cristian Bellei); (9) The Concession Schools of Bogota, Colombia (Felipe Barrera-Osorio); (10) Public and Private Schooling Initiatives in England (Stephen Machin and Joan Wilson); and (11) Education Contracting: Scope of Future Research (Harry A. Patrinos). An index is included.