School Choice, Charter Schools, and Education VouchersWebsites
Trends and Issues: School Choice -- An article that provides useful background and an overview of proposals and perspectives.Coverage of School Choice in Education Week -- a good overview statement and lots of articles and links.
Coverage of the Voucher Topic in Education Week -- a good overview statement and lots of articles and links.
Coverage of Charter Schools in Education Week -- a good overview statement and lots of articles and links.
Can Competition Really Improve Schools? -- an article that presents both sides of the debate over school choice, including recent evidence that raises questions.
Create Charter Schools The Reduce Segregation -- an excellent 2009 article that offers overview and review of much of the charter school research -- includes links to a number of good studies.
Informing the Debate -- a 2009 Harvard/MIT study that compares the performance of students in Boston's charter, pilot, and traditional schools. While some charter schools do better than the city's regular public schools, some do not.
Failed Promises: Assessing Charter Schools in the Twin Cities -- a 2008 study that found that students in Minneapolis/St. Paul charter schools either did less well than similar students in public schools or the same as those students.
Study Shows Better Scores for Charter Schools -- a 2009 study of New York City Charter Schools, which compared charter school students with students who had applied to those schools but by lottery had not gotten in, found that the charter school students scored better on a number of standardized tests.
Guv Quietly Signs School Voucher Bill -- an article from the Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 13, 2007, about the governor of Utah signing legislation to create a statewide voucher system that had it been implemented would have become the most expansive voucher system in the country. Shortly after the governor signed this bill the state electorate voted against a statewide voucher system.
Education Week's Coverage of June 2002, Supreme Court Decision -- articles about the precedent setting decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that ruled school vouchers are not unconstitutional.
Rethinking School's Coverage of the Supreme Court's Voucher Decision -- Rethinking Schools, an education journal opposed to vouchers, offers a critical point of view on the June 2002 decision of the Supreme Court.
The Prospects for Education Vouchers After the Supreme Court Ruling -- in June 2002, newspapers were full of headlines about how the U.S. Supreme Court had approved vouchers for America’s schools. In fact, the Supreme Court had only considered the legal status of a small voucher program in Ohio, the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program. This report discusses the meaning and significance of the High Court's ruling.
Charter Schools And Race: A Lost Opportunity for Integrated Education -- a 2003 report by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University that documents that "charter schools are largely more segregated than public schools."
Study: No Academic Gains From Vouchers for Black Students -- an article about a study that found no gains for African American students involved in a privately funded voucher program in New York City.
Charter Schools and Inequality: National Disparities in Funding, Teacher Quality, and Student Support -- a 2003 report by researchers from Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a collaborative effort between the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University -- it reports that "charter school educators are failing to acquire federal money to assist students from low-income families, that many teachers in charter schools do not have full credentials, and that quality differs among types of charter schools."
Georgia District Challenges State Charter Panel in Court -- an article explaining a 2009 case in which a Georgia School District is legally contesting the state charter school legislation that requires them to pay a local charter school for each of the district's students who attends that school. The decision in this case may establish an important precedent.
National Charter School Research Project - Achievement Studies -- an organization that promotes the development of charter schools and presents research favorable to the movement.
Free Market Policies and Public Education: What Is the Cost of Choice? -- An article from Phi Delta Kappan.
School Vouchers and Student Achievement: Recent Evidence, Remaining Questions -- a 2008 review of the research which found that, "The best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered education vouchers, most of which are not statistically different from zero. Further, what little evidence exists regarding the potential for public schools to respond to increased competitive pressure generated by vouchers suggests that one should remain wary that large improvements would result from a more comprehensive voucher system. The evidence from other forms of school choice is also
consistent with this conclusion."School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities -- a 2003 report by the National Council on Disability about whether vouchers will benefit or harm the education of students with disabilities.
How Do Vouchers Affect Educational And Social Equity and Civil Rights? -- information and perspective raising questions about the impact of vouchers on equity issues, especially as these concern students with disabilities.
Panel Reports Concerns On Special Education Vouchers -- a federal panel raises questions about vouchers because of their likely impact on students with disabilites.
Cleveland Voucher Program Evaluation -- an ongoing study of the impact of the Cleveland Voucher Program on academic performance -- in recent years this study has found no significant difference in academic performance between voucher and non-voucher students.
DC Vouchers: First Year Flaws and Failings -- a critical report about the first year of the school voucher program in the District of Columbia.
Public School Choice: Issues and Concerns for Urban Educators -- a summary discussion of school choice and recommendations for making choice more equitable.
School Choices -- an organization in favor of choice and vouchers.
Private School Vouchers: Myth vs. Fact -- an article critical of vouchers.
People for the American Way -- perspective of a group opposed to vouchers.
The National Education Association -- perspective of another group opposed to vouchers.
An Article by Stanford Professor, Martin Carnoy -- a critical article.
School Vouchers: The Wrong Choice for Public Education -- a critical article.
American Federation of Teachers -- a critical view of vouchers.
The SEED School -- an interesting charter public school idea in Washington, DC, that involves students living at the school during the week. In both 2004 and 2005 100% of SEED School graduates went to college.
The SAGE Program -- The Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program has been proven to improve student achievement in schools serving low-income communities. It does this through a reduction in class size, longer school hours, collaboration with community organizatins, rigorous curriculum and high standards for teachers. When compared with the use of vouchers, this program produces higher levels of achievement through school reform rather than school choice.
The Preuss School -- a successful charter middle and high school dedicated to providing a rigorous college prep education for motivated low-income students who will become the first in their families to graduate from college -- affiliated with the Univ. of California, San Diego.
Vouchers and Educational Freedom: A Debate -- a debate over whether vouchers would lead to greater freedom of choice or trap private schools in a web of subsidy and regulation that would destroy their independence and quality.
Books and Articles
Andre-Bechely, L. 2005. Could It Be Otherwise? Parents and the Inequalities of Public School Choice. Routledge.Arum, R. 1996. Do Private Schoos Force Public Schools to Compete? American Sociological Review, 61(1): 29-46.
Bracy, G. 2002. The War Against America's Public Schools: Privatizing Schools, Commercializing Education. Allyn and Bacon.
Brighouse, H. 2000. School Choice and Social Justice. Oxford Univ. Press.
Chubb, J. & Moe, T. 1990. Politics, Markets, and America's Schools. Brookings Institution.
Corwin, R. & Schneider, J. 2005. The School Choice Hoax: Fixing America’s Schools. Praeger.
Dillon, S. 2004. Collapse of 60 Charter School Leaves Californians Scrambling. New York Times, Sept. 17.
Fuller, B. & Elmore, R. 1996. Who Chooses? Who Loses? Culture, Institutions, and the Unequal Effects of School Choice. Teachers College Press.
Gill, B., Timpane, M. Ross, K. & Brewer, D. Rhetoric Versus Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools. Rand Corporation.
Good, T. & Braden, J. 2000. The Great School Debate: Choice, Vouchers, and Charters. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Goldhaber, D. & Eide, E. 2002. What Do We Know (and Need to Know) about the Impact of School Choice Reforms on Disadvantaged Students? Harvard Educational Review, 72(2): 157-176.
Greene, J. P. et al., 1998. School Choice in Milwaukee: A Randomized Experiment. In P. Peterson and B. Hassel (Eds.) Learning from School Choice. Brookings Institution.
Holme, J. 2002. Buying Homes, Buying Schools: School choice and the Social Construction of School Quality. Harvard Educational Review, 72(2): 177-205.
Howe, K. & Welner, K. 2002. School Choice and the Pressure to Perform: Deja Vu for Children with Disabilities? Remedial and Special Education, v. 23 (4): 212-221.
Levin, H. 1998. Educational Vouchers: Effectiveness, Choice and Costs. Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, Summer, v.17 n3 p. 373.
Mendez, T. 2004. Can Competition Really Improve Schools? Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 7, p. 12.
Miner, B. 2000. No One Really Knows How Children in Milwaukee's Voucher Schools Are Faring. The Nation, June 5, v. 270, p. 23.
Peterson, P. & Campbell, D. (Eds.) 2002. Charters, Vouchers, and Public Education. Brookings Institution Press.
Rethinking Schools. 2000. Selling Out Our Schools, Rethinking Schools.
Rosen, G. 2000. Are School Vouchers Un-American? Commentary, Feb. v109, p. 26.
Rouse, C. 1998. Private School Vouchers and Student Achievement: An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113: 553-602.
Samuels, C. & Reid, K. 2005. Ohio OK's Vouchers for Pupils in Low-Rated Schools. Education Week, July 13.
Schorr, J. 2002. Hard Lessons: The Promise of an Inner City Charter School. Ballantine.
Wells, A. 1993. Time to Choose: America at the Crossroads of School Choice Policy. Hill and Wang.
Wells, A. 2002. Where Charter School Policy Fails: The Problems of Accountability and Equity. Teachers College Press.
Witte, J. 2000. The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America’s First Voucher Program. Princeton Univ. Press.
Film/Video
The Bottom Line, 2001 (Stone Lantern Films) -- a documentary about the movement toward vouchers and charter schools that raises questions about the consequences for democratic principles of education