Abstract: This paper uses data from the implementation of a district-wide public school choice plan in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina to estimate preferences for school characteristics and examine their implications for the local educational market. We use parental rankings of their top three choices of schools matched with student demographic and test score data to estimate a mixed-logit discrete choice demand model for schools. We find that parents value proximity highly and the preference attached to a school's mean test score increases with student's income and own academic ability. We also find considerable heterogeneity in preferences even after controlling for income, academic achievement and race, with strong negative correlations between preferences for academics and school proximity. Simulations of parental responses to test score improvements at a school suggest that the demand response at high-performing schools would be larger than the response at low-performing schools, leading to disparate demand-side pressure to improve performance under school choice.

Abstract: The “choice” movement of the 1990s culminated in a proliferation of charter schools. However, school choice and charter school options may have future consequences for racial segregation given the potential for white flight similar to that which occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing from racial competition theory, this article contributes to literature on education and stratification in a broader sense by examining white enrollment in charter schools and its possible consequences for racial segregation. Data are drawn from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), the Common Core of Data (CCD), and a unique dataset on district academic quality. Analyses suggest that relatively even distributions of white and nonwhite students within districts and corresponding competitive pressures spur white charter school enrollment. We suggest that such racial competition within the educational arena may indeed be bolstering the “return to school segregation.”

Abstract: Charter schools have become a very popular instrument for reforming public schools, because they expand choices, facilitate local innovation, and provide incentives for the regular public schools while remaining under public control. Despite their conceptual appeal, evaluating their performance has been hindered by the selective nature of their student populations. This paper investigates the quality of charter schools in Texas in terms of mathematics and reading achievement and finds that, after an initial start-up period, average school quality in the charter sector is not significantly different from that in regular public schools. Perhaps most important, the parental decision to exit a charter school is much more sensitive to education quality than the decision to exit a regular public school, consistent with the notion that the introduction of charter schools substantially reduces the transactions costs of switching schools. Low income charter school families are, however, less sensitive to school quality than higher income families.

Abstract: By opening the system to competition, popular school choice reforms seek to remake public education into a more consumer‐oriented endeavor. While the underlying theory holds that competitive pressures will induce change and improvement in educational processes, research indicates that organizations often respond instead by developing promotional strategies to succeed in the marketplace. This analysis reviews evidence of organizational behavior in education in reconsidering theories of school responses to competition. Due to unique quasi‐public good aspects of schooling, it appears that marketlike incentives are corrupted when applied to education, “short‐circuiting” the incentives that reformers had intended to drive school improvement.

Abstract: Bold assertions have been made in policy reports and popular articles on the high and increasing enrollment in Pakistani religious schools, commonly known as madrassas. Given the importance placed on the subject by policy makers in Pakistan and those internationally, it is troubling that none of the reports and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies. This paper uses published data sources and a census of schooling choice to show that existing estimates are inflated by an order of magnitude. Madrassas account for less than 1 percent of all enrollment in the country and there is no evidence of a dramatic increase in recent years. The educational landscape in Pakistan has changed substantially in the last decade, but this is due to an explosion of private schools, an important fact that has been left out of the debate on Pakistani education. Moreover, when we look at school choice, we find that no one explanation fits the data. While most existing theories of madrassa enrollment are based on household attributes (for instance, a preference for religious schooling or the household's access to other schooling options) the data show that among households with at least one child enrolled in a madrassa, 75 percent send their second (and/or third) child to a public or private school or both. Widely promoted theories simply do not explain this substantial variation within households.

Abstract: A question commonly raised about school choice is whether it would result in sorting or stratification. Previous research has asked this with respect to inter-district or Tiebout choice, but has generated no consensus in part because areas’ district concentrations may be endogenous. This paper addresses this by exploiting the fact that some metropolitan areas (MAs) have different numbers of districts operating at the primary and the secondary level. The resulting within-MA, between-educational level variation in district concentration suggests that increases in district availability do affect children’s district and school level peer groups, and that they lower private enrollment. (JEL H1,H7,I2)

Abstract: This paper uses data from the implementation of a district-wide public school choice plan in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina to estimate preferences for school characteristics and examine their implications for the local educational market. We use parental rankings of their top three choices of schools matched with student demographic and test score data to estimate a mixed-logit discrete choice demand model for schools. We find that parents value proximity highly and the preference attached to a school's mean test score increases with student's income and own academic ability. We also find considerable heterogeneity in preferences even after controlling for income, academic achievement and race, with strong negative correlations between preferences for academics and school proximity. Simulations of parental responses to test score improvements at a school suggest that the demand response at high-performing schools would be larger than the response at low-performing schools, leading to disparate demand-side pressure to improve performance under school choice. Moreover, given the greater sensitivity to school test scores among high-income and high-scoring youth, the marginal students attracted when a school improves performance would typically raise the average income and baseline test score at the school.

Abstract: Stigma and school voucher threats under a revised 2002 Florida accountability law have positive impacts on student performance. Stigma and public school choice threats under the U.S. federal accountability law, No Child Left Behind, do not have similar effects in Florida. Significant impacts of stigma, when combined with the voucher threat, are observed on the test score performance of African Americans, those eligible for free lunch, and those with the lowest initial test scores. No significant impacts of the voucher threat on the performances of whites and Hispanics are detected. Estimations rely upon individual-level data and are based upon regression analyses that exploit artificial distinctions created by cliffs within the accountability regimes.

Abstract: With No Child Left Behind legislation permitting students to switch from so-called failing schools, key questions are whether parents will act to select another school and which schools they will choose. Long-standing school choice systems provide evidence about low-income parents’strategies to gather information and negotiate the application process. Interviews with parents of eighth graders in Philadelphia indicate that faced with little high-quality official information about schools, parents’ social networks played an important role in the decision. Most parents were hungry for information about schools but lacked specifics on academic performance or children’s chances of admission. The data suggest that more detailed school information and a district commitment to counseling parents are essential for making well-informed choices. Even so, in districts with few good school options for students, there are limits to parents’ability to find a school that represents a substantial improvement over the scho...

Abstract: Stigma and school voucher threats under a revised 2002 Florida accountability law have positive impacts on student performance. Stigma and public school choice threats under the U.S. federal accountability law, No Child Left Behind, do not have similar effects in Florida. Significant impacts of stigma, when combined with the voucher threat, are observed on the test score performance of African Americans, those eligible for free lunch, and those with the lowest initial test scores. No significant impacts of the voucher threat on the performances of whites and Hispanics are detected. Estimations rely upon individual-level data and are based upon regression analyses that exploit artificial distinctions created by cliffs within the accountability regimes.

Abstract: Using sociological, economic, and political analysis, the authors present studies of controlled and voluntary choice plans, charter schools, private school selection, and their interaction with race, social class, gender, and student disability.

Abstract: 1. Education Privatization in its Many Forms I: The Family 2.Families as Contractual Partners in Education 3. Modeling School Choice: A Comparison of Public, Private-Independent, Private-Religious and Home-Schooled Students 4.Home-Schooling in the US II:The Private Market 5. The Marketplace in Education 6. The Effects of Competition on Educational Outcomes: A Review of the US Evidence 7. The Supply of Private Schooling 8. The Potential of For-Profit Schools for Educational Reform 9. Post-compulsory Entitlements: Vouchers for Life-long Learning

Abstract: We use data from a sample of applicants to a national means-tested school voucher program and a national sample of the population eligible for the program to evaluate the factors leading families to use school vouchers. Our analysis divides the process of voucher usage into two distinct stages: initial application and subsequent take-up. Using a nested logit model, we find that some factors, like religious affiliation and religious service attendance, affect both stages. Others, like mother's education, affect only one (application). Still others, like ethnicity, have opposite effects at the two stages. Compared to Whites, minorities are more likely to apply for vouchers, but less likely to take them when given the opportunity. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management

Abstract: This article presents research on the school choice processes and practices in a large urban district on the West Coast. It shares the stories of three mothers’ experiences with public school choice and tells how, through the process of choosing schools for their children, they became participants in the inequities and inequalities of the district’s choice programs. By showing how these mothers accomplished their goals of getting their child into a school other than their neighborhood school, the article illuminates how school choice policies proposed to be more equitable and democratic for parents, in many ways, still reproduce the schooling inequalities that they were intended to reduce.

Abstract: This paper explores factors influencing parents' choices of single‐sex or co‐educational schools in the independent sector. In doing so, it explores two relatively under‐researched aspects of school choice by focusing upon gender and upon the middle classes. The paper draws upon research conducted in three independent schools—a boys' school, a girls' school and a co‐educational school. Data were generated via questionnaires (225 responses) and semi‐structured interviews (15 sets of parents). The findings suggest that the reputation and exam results of schools are key features guiding parents' school choices. However, whether a school is single‐sex or co‐educational is an important factor for many parents. Furthermore, the long‐held view that single‐sex education has advantages (especially academic) for girls, whilst co‐education has advantages (especially social) for boys, still prevails.

Abstract: Prompted by widespread concerns about public school quality, a growing empirical literature has measured the effects of greater choice on school performance. This paper contributes to that literature in three ways. First, it makes the observation that the overall effect of greater choice, which has been the focus of prior research, can be decomposed into demand and supply components: knowing the relative sizes of the two is very relevant for policy. Second, using rich data from a large metropolitan area, it provides a direct and intuitive measure of the competition each school faces. This takes the form of a school-specific elasticity that measures the extent to which reductions in school quality would lead to reductions in demand. Third, the paper provides evidence that these elasticity measures are strongly related to school performance: a one-standard deviation increase in the competitiveness of a school's local environment within the Bay Area leads to a 0.15 standard deviation increase in average test scores. This positive correlation is robust and is consistent with strong supply responsiveness on the part of public schools, of relevance to the broader school choice debate.

Abstract: F ew educational reform movements have attracted more attention than choice programs in education—programs that, as a result of the reformulation of regulations governing public schools, provide parents with educational options in the forms of school vouchers, charter school programs, homeschooling, interand intradistrict enrollment options, and other alternatives to the traditional public school system. Using school choice as a lens through which to review mothers’ involvement in educational reform, this article examines how gendered assumptions about families and markets pervade discussions about school choice, particularly those about homeschooling. Despite an abundance of research on school choice (e.g., Good and Braden 2000; Yancey 2000; Poetter and KnightAbowitz 2001), few studies have considered the gender politics of parents’ incorporation or the fact that school-choice programs are formulated in ways that often reveal gendered and social-classed assumptions about families, employment, markets, and education. Why? Why, when we have so many excellent accounts of the moral and structural constraints that mothers disproportionately face and of women as mothers and caretakers in the realm of education, have critical realist and feminist perspectives been so lacking in research on educational reform? Why, when some policy researchers are clearly concerned with “welfare mothers” and “deadbeat dads” (e.g., Goodwin 1997; Mensing, French, and Fuller 2000), does gender escape consideration when the subject turns from thinking about schools as mechanisms for securing students’ social welfare to thinking about schools as efficient structures that provide parents with educational options for their children?

Abstract: Parents who wish to choose schools for their children must have more than a desire for different or better - they need detailed knowledge of the processes and practices that will give them access to schools of choice. This book vividly contrasts the experiences of a diverse group of urban parents choosing their children's schools with school choice policies from voluntary integration mandates to the No Child Left Behind Act. Lois Andre-Bechely carefully uncovers the race- and class-based inequities these policies sustain, documenting the way parents themselves become complicit in the historical inequalities of schooling. This book exposes how educational institutions are making this so and provokes new thinking about how public school choice could be implemented in more equitable and democratic ways.

Abstract: Bold assertions have been made in policy reports and popular articles on the high and increasing enrollment in Pakistani religious schools, commonly known as madrassas. Given the importance placed on the subject by policymakers in Pakistan and those internationally, it is troubling that none of the reports and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies. The authors of this paper use published data sources and a census of schooling choice to show that existing estimates are inflated by an order of magnitude. Madrassas account for less than 1 percent of all enrollment in the country and there is no evidence of a dramatic increase in recent years. The educational landscape in Pakistan has changed substantially in the past decade, but this is due to an explosion of private schools, an important fact that has been left out of the debate on Pakistani education. Moreover, when the authors look at school choice, they find that no one explanation fits the data. While most existing theories of madrassa enrollment are based on household attributes (for instance, a preference for religious schooling or the household’s access to other schooling options), the data show that among households with at least one child enrolled in a madrassa, 75 percent send their second (and/or third) child to a public or private school or both. Widely promoted theories simply do not explain this substantial variation within households.

Abstract: Distribution of school provision in the greater Paris metropolitan area, including availability of certain courses and study programs, is strongly correlated with the social profiles of the different localities and corresponds to sharp disparities. The highly diversified, attractive school options in localities whose residents are highly privileged in socio-economic and occupational terms stands in contrast to the less diversified educational resources, including fewer course and study program options, and reduced private school presence in more markedly working-class municipalities. Different approaches to school choice are strongly linked to parents’ socio-economic status but do not amount merely to practices for avoiding stigmatized middle schools in working-class localities. Those approaches make sense when considered in relation to what may be tightly circumscribed social and school environments and differentiated social positions and demands. The results presented here call into question the effectiveness of school districting rules in France aimed at regulating the social profile of middle schools as long as the space considered doesn’t correspond to effective school practices of each social category.

Abstract: Part 1 Foreword Part 2 Introduction Part 3 Part I: Resources Chapter 4 The Money Myth-"Schools perform poorly because they need more money." Chapter 5 The Special Ed Myth-"Special education programs burden public schools, hindering their academic performance." Chapter 6 The Myth of Helplessness-"Social problems like poverty cause students to fail schools are helpless to prevent it." Chapter 7 The Class Size Myth-"Schools should reduce class sizes small classes would produce big improvements." Chapter 8 The Certification Myth-"Certified or more experienced teachers are substantially more effective." Chapter 9 The Teacher Pay Myth-"Teachers are badly underpaid." Part 10 Part II: Outcomes Chapter 11 The Myth of Decline-"Schools are performing much worse than they used to." Chapter 12 The Graduation Myth-"Nearly all students graduate from high school." Chapter 13 The College Access Myth-"Nonacademic barriers prevent a lot of minority students from attending college." Part 14 Part III: Accountability Chapter 15 The High Stakes Myth-"The results of high-stakes tests are not credible because they're distorted by cheating and teaching to the test. Chapter 16 The Push-Out Myth-"Exit exams cause more students to drop out of high school." Chapter 17 The Accountability Burden Myth-"Accountability systems impose large financial burdens on schools." Part 18 Part IV: Choice Chapter 19 The Inconclusive Research Myth-"The evidence on the effectiveness of vouchers is mixed and inconclusive." Chapter 20 The Exeter Myth-"Private schools have higher test scores because they have more money and recruit high-performing students while expelling low-performing students." Chapter 21 The Draining Myth-"School choice harms public schools." Chapter 22 The Disabled Need Not Apply Myth-"Private schools won't serve disabled students." Chapter 23 The Democratic Values Myth-"Private schools are less effective at promoting tolerance and civic participation." Chapter 24 The Segregation Myth-"Private schools are more racially segregated than public schools." Part 25 Conclusion Part 26 Afterword

Abstract: One point of debate in the recent controversy in the media and among policy analysts over the academic achievement of charter school students is whether the charter students are in some way harder to educate than their counterparts enrolled in traditional public schools. This article examines this question using data from the 2002–2003 school year in Washington, D.C. It begins by examining a simple binomial model of the proportion of students in key demographic and programmatic categories linked to educability. It then turns to the estimation of a more theoretically appropriate mixture model that assumes two latent categories of charter schools. It concludes with an analysis that moves beyond simple demographic/programmatic factors to consider measures of educability using individual-level survey data from charter and traditional public school students. Overall, there is mixed evidence of differences in the educability of students in the two sectors.

Abstract: Recent studies have produced conflicting findings about whether test-based rewards and sanctions create incentives that improve student performance, or hurdles that increase dropout and pushout rates from schools. This article reports the findings from a study that examined the impact of England's accountability reforms and investigated whether the confluent pressures associated with increased testing, school ranking systems, and other sanctions contributed to higher levels of student exclusion (expulsion and suspension). The study found that England's high-stakes approach to accountability, combined with the dynamics of school choice and other curriculum and testing pressures led to a narrowing of the curriculum, the marginalization of low-performing students, and a climate perceived by teachers to be less tolerant of students with academic and behavioral difficulties. A comparison of higher- and lower-excluding schools, however, found that these effects were more pronounced in the higher-excluding schools, which lacked strong systems and internal structures for supporting staff communication, teacher collaboration, and students' individual needs. The study offers an international perspective on recent trends toward greater accountability in education, pointing to a complex inter-relationship between the pressures of national policies and the unintended consequences on schools' organizational and teachers' instructional capacities. The study's findings raise particular implications for the United States and show that in the design of accountability systems, attention must be paid to how the pressures from accountability will affect the capacity of schools and teachers to respond to students who are low-performing and struggling academically.

Abstract: Exposes deep contradictions in the polities of American educational reform Much of the debate over school choice has focused on how voucher systems and charter schools affect the quality of public education. But should American education really be subjected to market forces? What is the significance of this decision for American democracy? The great hope of the school choice movement is that the introduction of market forces will make for more efficient and responsive public educational institutions. Parents become customers, and public schools become firms that compete for these customers on the open market. But, as Scott Abernathy crucially reminds us, parents are much more than customers. They are also citizens who help shape educational policy at bake sales and budget meetings, in teacher conferences and political campaigns. Abernathy challenges the assumption that public schools will necessarily improve when subjected to market-based reforms, raising instead the alarming possibility that such changes will produce a national anti-system of isolated and disconnected schools. School Choice and the Future of American Democracy shows how school choice breaks open the boundaries of a once-closed system, allowing the parents who are most involved in their children's education to leave the public schools for private or charter institutions. Poor schools are most hurt by this drain of civic engagement. When we privatize the customer relationship in education, we risk privatizing the very foundations of our citizenship.

Abstract: In an influential paper, Hoxby (2000) studies the relationship between the degree of so-called "Tiebout choice" among local school districts within a metropolitan area and average test scores. She argues that choice is endogenous to school quality, and instruments with the number of larger and smaller streams. She finds a large positive effect of choice on test scores, which she interprets as evidence that school choice induces greater school productivity. This paper revisits Hoxby's analysis. I document several important errors in Hoxby's data and code. I also demonstrate that the estimated choice effect is extremely sensitive to the way that "larger streams" are coded. When Hoxby's hand count of larger streams is replaced with any of several alternative, easily replicable measures, there is no significant difference between IV and OLS, each of which indicates a choice effect near zero. There is thus little evidence that schools respond to Tiebout competition by raising productivity. A data appendix for this paper is available online