Abstract: We provide new evidence about the degree of social segregation in England's secondary schools, employing a cross-national perspective. Analysis is based on data for 27 rich industrialised countries from the 2000 and 2003 rounds of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA), using a number of different measures of social background and of segregation, and allowing for sampling variation in the estimates. England is shown to be a middle-ranking country, as is the USA. High segregation countries include Austria, Belgium, Germany and Hungary. Low segregation countries include the four Nordic countries and Scotland. In explaining England's position, we argue that its segregation is mostly accounted for by unevenness in social background in the state school sector. Focusing on this sector, we show that cross-country differences in segregation are associated with the prevalence of selective choice of pupils by schools. Low-segregation countries such as those in the Nordic area and Scotland have negligible selection in schools. High segregation countries like Austria, Germany and Hungary have separate school tracks for academic and vocational schooling and, in each case, over half of this is accounted for by unevenness in social background between the different tracks rather than by differences within each track.

Abstract: School choice survey data from the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, a large county‐wide school district, is analysed to examine the characteristics of parents who consider choosing private schools for their children and those who do not. We examine differences in background, including race, educational attainment and socioeconomic status, as well as differences in parent satisfaction with their child’s previous school, parent involvement in school, parents’ priorities in school choice, as well as parents’ social networks. After controlling for background characteristics, we find that parent satisfaction with their child’s previous school was not a predictor of considering a private school. Rather, parent involvement seems to be a more important indicator of whether or not a parent would consider sending their child to a private school. In this case, parents are not ‘pushed’ away from public schools, contrary to much public rhetoric that suggests private schools are somehow inherently ‘better’ than p...

Abstract: Empirical studies have produced mixed results on the relationship between a school's sports success and the quantity and quality of students that apply to the school. This study uses two unique datasets to shed additional light on the indirect benefits that sports success provides to NCAA Division I schools. Key findings include: (i) football and basketball success significantly increase the quantity of applications to a school, with estimates ranging from 2-8% for the top 20 football schools and the top 16 basketball schools each year, (ii) private schools see increases in application rates after sports success that are 2-4 times higher than public schools, (iii) the extra applications received are composed of both low and high SAT scoring students thus providing potential for schools to improve their admission outcomes, and (iv) schools appear to exploit these increases in applications by improving both the number and the quality of incoming students.

Abstract: This study captures the impact of school choice decisions by comparing the racial composition of the district schools students exited to the charter schools they entered. Charter school catchment areas are operationalized using a statewide student-level database to track school attendance patterns of individual students over 4 years. Charter elementary school choosers enter charter schools that are more racially segregated than the district schools they exited, although on entrance into high school, choosers enter charter schools that are as racially segregated or more integrated than the district schools they exited. In addition, racial segregation patterns are the result of White flight and Black and Native American students self-segregating into charter schools that are more racially isolated than the district schools they exit.

Abstract: This paper examines the residential location and school choice responses to the desegregation of large urban public school districts. We decompose the well documented decline in white public enrollment following desegregation into migration to suburban districts and increased private school enrollment, and find that migration was the more prevalent response. Desegregation caused black public enrollment to increase significantly outside of the South, mostly by slowing decentralization of black households to the suburbs, and large black private school enrollment declines in southern districts. Central district school desegregation generated only a small portion of overall urban population decentralization between 1960 and 1990.

Abstract: At a time when the public sector and state education (in the United Kingdom) is under threat from the encroaching marketisation policy and private finance initiatives, our research reveals white middle‐class parents who in spite of having the financial opportunity to turn their backs on the state system are choosing to assert their commitment to the urban state‐run comprehensive school. Our analysis examines the processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’, and demonstrates the nature of the commitment the parents make to the local comprehensive school. However, it also shows the parents’ perceptions of the risk involved and their anxieties that these give rise to. The middle‐class parents are thus caught in a web of moral ambiguity, dilemmas and ambivalence, trying to perform ‘the good/ethical self’ while ensuring the ‘best’ for their children.

Abstract: Private schooling in India has expanded rapidly in the past decade. However, few studies have looked at its implications for educational quality. Using data from the recently collected India Human Development Survey, this paper seeks to provide a description of private schooling in India and examine the effects of private school enrollment on educational quality. The results suggest that controlling for the endogeneity of school choice, children in private schools have higher reading and arithmetic skills than those in government schools. While overall gains are modest in size, about one fourth to one third of a standard deviation, the gains for students from lower economic strata are higher than those for upper income students. The paper explores this relationship by examining the treatment of students from different economic strata in government and private schools and finds that while students from lower economic strata are more likely to be physically punished in government schools than their better off peers, the relationship between parental economic status and physical punishment is negligible in private schools.

Abstract: We draw on recent developments in the sociology of race and ethnicity and theories of the duality of social structure to explain how the formation of ‘educational identities’ interacts with racial stratification to shape the school choices of highly educated whites in the United States. Analysis of the 1996 National Household Education Survey shows that the racial composition of schools plays an important role in the schooling choices of highly educated whites. As the per cent black in a residential area increases, whites are more likely to select alternative, higher-percentage-white schooling for their children. Importantly, this effect is amplified for highly educated whites (but not highly educated blacks). Ironically, then, despite many positive effects of formal education on racial attitudes, increased education for whites leads to greater negative sensitivity to blacks in public schools, which may in turn have the unintended effect of increasing school segregation and racial inequality.

Abstract: This review paper, prepared for the forthcoming Russell Sage volume Changing Poverty, considers the ability of different education policies to improve the learning outcomes of low-income children in America. Disagreements on this question stem in part from different beliefs about the problems with our nation's public schools. In our view there is some empirical support for each of the general concerns that have been raised about public schools serving high-poverty student populations, including: the need for more funding for those school inputs where additional spending is likely to pass a benefit-cost test; limited capacity of many schools to substantially improve student learning by improving the quality of instruction on their own; and the need for improved incentives for both teachers and students, and for additional operational flexibility. Evidence suggests that the most productive changes to existing education policies are likely to come from increased investments in early childhood education for poor children, improving the design of the federal No Child Left Behind accountability system, providing educators with incentives to adopt practices with a compelling research base while expanding efforts to develop and identify effective instructional regimes, and continued support and evaluation of a variety of public school choice options.

Abstract: This paper questions whether participation in vocational education and training (VET) provides a successful progression route into UK higher education (HE). Following an overview of the UK policy agenda two inter‐connected aspects of HE access are investigated: students’ choice of institution and choice of subject. Analysis of administrative data shows that A‐levels provide the major access route into more prestigious HE institutions. Students with VET backgrounds are more likely to start their HE studies at post‐92 universities with lower RAE results. Different educational pathways also lead to different HE subject areas which, in turn, are connected to diverse labour market outcomes. Case study data identify highly individualised decision‐making patterns for institutional and subject choice. Rational choice models can explain these choices only to a limited extent. Restrictive information strategies and other factors affecting individual choices require consideration and there are significant difference...

Abstract: This article focuses on how parental school choices affect the degree of racial and academic segregation in charter schools. The research design allows for a direct comparison of the racial and academic conditions of the district schools students exited to the charter schools they entered. Parents choose to leave more racially integrated district schools to attend more racially segregated charter schools. Simultaneously, parents enroll their students into charter schools with at least the same degree of academic integration as the district schools that students exited. The academic and racial segregation results are then used to test the extent to which students congregate into specialized charter schools according to hypothesized patterns. The findings call into question the assertion of charter school advocates that segregated conditions in charter schools are the result of students self-selecting into specialized charter schools.

Abstract: This article assesses the period following the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA) and reflects on the main continuities and discontinuities in policy emphases since that Act. It begins by outlining education policy under the Conservatives from 1979. In this, it shows how the Conservative's simultaneous pursuit of marketization and centralization in education, nowhere more so than through the ERA, provides a key illustration of Neave's (1988) `evaluative state'. In then considering the record of New Labour on education, the article identifies three central strands of policy: first, targeted attempts to tackle disadvantage and, second, an emphasis on school improvement, both of which focus on schools themselves rather than the context in which they operate, and, third, the notion that school diversity and parental choice will lead to higher standards for all. This discussion is used to show the significant continuities between Conservative and New Labour policies in terms of the drive for an essentially market...

Abstract: Getting Choice Right: Ensuring Equity and Efficiency in Education Policy, by Julian R. Betts & Tom Loveless (Eds.). Washington, DC: Brookings, 2005, 225 pp., $19.95, paperback. School-choice schemes have grown rapidly over the last 15 years, usually with the direct and indirect support of big business. Whether it is charter schools, voucher programs, education tax credits, so-called "scholarship opportunity programs," or other school-choice schemes, all seem to be on the rise to varying degrees. Charter schools, in particular, have grown at the fastest pace, with approximately 300 to 400 new charter schools coming into existence every year (Center for Education Reform, 2006). Advocates of such schemes claim that choice schools will raise achievement (as "measured" by scores from standardized tests), enhance autonomy for teachers and administrators, allow for pedagogical innovation, and compel traditional public schools to improve through competitive pressures. Such schemes have also been met with growing controversy, criticism, and resistance, with many claiming that school-choice schemes are essentially about union-busting, promoting privatization, fostering further segregation, depriving existing public schools of large sums of money, and eliminating publicly elected school boards (Carnoy, 1995; see also several articles and special reports at www.rethinkingschools.org). Getting Choice Right: Ensuring Equity and Efficiency in Education Policy emerges in and reflects this context that is squarely in the school-choice camp. The book is the product of the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education, initiated in 2001 by renowned school-choice advocate Paul Hill. It is published by the largely conservative Brookings Institution. Julian Betts (University of California, San Diego) and Tom Loveless (Brookings Institution) are both the editors of and contributors to the book. The book's other contributors, generally school-choice advocates, include: Laura Hamilton (RAND), Brian Gill (RAND), Frederick Hess (American Enterprise Institute), Kacey Guin (University of Washington), Dan Goldhaber (University of Washington), Larry Rosenstock (High Tech High, San Diego), Jeffrey Henig (Teachers College, Columbia University), Janet Weiss (University of Michigan), Karen Ross (University of Michigan), and Patrick Wolf (Georgetown University). Getting Choice Right "analyzes the potential costs and benefits of school choice and the mechanisms that policy makers can adopt to maximize the benefits of choice while mitigating its risks" (p. 1). The impression created is that the book is not an uncritical endorsement of school-choice schemes, but rather one that recognizes and considers criticisms of such schemes, with the purported purpose of making choice "work." The essays in this volume assess the basic mechanics of school choice, with a focus on the question of how, if the nation decides to expand choice, it might do so in a way that will benefit students while reducing the social costs. (p. 2) The book covers a broad array of issues and problems surrounding school-choice theory, practice, and policy. These range from extensive discussion of market theory, how parents choose schools, the politics of school choice, the relationship between school-choice, and to segregation. Also explored is the nature of the effects of competition on traditional public schools, students, and teachers. Is student achievement, as "measured" by standardized tests, higher among "choosers" or "non-choosers"? The themes of efficiency and competition pervade the entire book. Each of the 10 chapters generally identifies and articulates a specific issue or problem pertaining to school-choice schemes, elaborates the nature of the issue or problem, and ends with practical conclusions, implications, and recommendations for policy makers. Each chapter is relatively thorough, well-considered, informative, and instructive. …

Abstract: This article examines an effort to use urban schools to promote the revitalization of a large northeastern city in the United States. In order to attract and retain professional families to a regenerated central city, downtown schools are re‐branded and promoted to such families as suitable for their children. The article draws on interviews and observation in a particular downtown elementary school to examine the experiences of different groups of parents in this new educational market. The data reveal how middle‐ and upper‐class parents are treated as sought‐after customers who gain and retain positions of influence over the direction of the school once their children are admitted. However, the same processes marginalize low‐income and minority parents. The article concludes that while the goals of the policy may be ostensibly worthy, one of its consequences is to reinscribe existing status positions and inequalities.

Abstract: Chile´s experience suggests that we have much to learn about the consequences of education reform, especially school choice, and why it has not resulted in learning gains of the magnitude one might have predicted. This paper addresses these issues in two ways. First, we review the previous literature on the impact of choice in Chile, focusing on the effects on average student achievement and stratification.To shed additional light on this debate, we present new evidence from a regression-discontinuity design that supports previous findings that school choice-at least as it has been implemented until now-has increased stratification while having little effect on average achievement. Second, we explore some factors that may explain why the evolution of school quality in Chile has been disappointing. We focus on the difficulties researchers have encountered in generating and interpreting information on school performance."

Abstract: One of the pillars of the educational voucher system instituted in Chile is that competition among schools to attract students would improve the quality of the education provided. Surveys have suggested that families rank the distance of the school from their home as the most important factor for choosing a school. They also suggest that parents largely ignore the results of standardized tests. We use a novel data set which includes measures of the distance between homes and schools to analyze the determinants of school choice. Economic theory suggests, and the estimations confirm, that parents consider quality of the school and its location when choosing schools. The paper quantifies the relevant trade-offs.

Abstract: The overwhelming increase of parental involvement reported by today's college administrators requires a careful understanding of today's parents, their influence, and their expectations.

Abstract: This research contributes to discussions about social inequality in school choices in two ways. First, educational choices include the multitude of options families may consider, including choosing a home in a particular area and home-schooling. Decision-making is considered not at a single point in time, but over children's educational careers. Second, this research explores school choices across school district boundaries to include school choices in suburban and rural, as well as urban districts. I use data from a random sample of families with school-aged children living in the Philadelphia Metropolitan area (including some counties in New Jersey) and other counties throughout Pennsylvania to explore the options that families consider for their children's schooling. The data paint a picture of two constellations of families: those who are white, suburban, and middle-income (who primarily select schools based on their neighborhoods and residences), and those composed of lower-income and urban families ...

Abstract: Education Policy Research Unit Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies College of Education, Arizona State University P.O. Box 872411, Tempe, AZ 852872411 Telephone: (480) 965-1886 Fax: (480) 965-0303 E-mail: epsl@asu.edu http://edpolicylab.org Education and the Public Interest Center School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0249 Telephone: (303) 492-8370 Fax: (303) 492-7090 Email: epic@colorado.edu http://education.colorado.edu/epic

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION A number of important policy questions surround school voucher initiatives. Before a new voucher program is enacted, policymakers usually want to know answers to questions such as: (1) Do voucher programs primarily serve disadvantaged students?; (2) Do parents like voucher programs?; and (3) Do students benefit academically from vouchers? The answers to these questions provide policymakers and the general public with crucial information regarding what societal goals are and are not advanced when parents are allowed to use public funds to enroll their child in a private school of their choosing. Fortunately, enough voucher programs have been established and evaluated to provide us with consistent and reliable answers to many of the policy questions surrounding school vouchers targeted at disadvantaged students. Had the Utah universal school voucher program not been defeated in a recent public referendum, it would have been the thirteenth school voucher program launched in the United States.1 The Utah initiative would have been the first voucher program in this country open to all school-age children.2 The twelve voucher programs that are approved and operating in the United States3 all target voucher eligibility to students that are disadvantaged in various ways. Thus, the research to date on school vouchers provides only speculative information about the likely effects of universal programs even as it provides a wealth of data on the effects of the targeted voucher programs that are becoming an increasingly common feature of the school-reform landscape. The high-quality studies on school voucher programs generally reach positive conclusions about vouchers. The many evaluations of targeted school voucher initiatives confirm that these programs serve highly disadvantaged populations of students. Of the ten separate analyses of data from "gold standard" experimental studies of voucher programs, nine conclude that some or all of the participants benefited academically from using a voucher to attend a private school. The evidence to date suggests that school voucher programs benefit many of the disadvantaged students and parents that they serve.4 Part II of this Article describes the twelve voucher programs that currently exist in the United States and the student populations that they serve. Part III discusses and critiques the various methods that have been used to evaluate school voucher programs. Part IV argues that the evidence from rigorous voucher evaluations indicates that voucher programs increase parental satisfaction with schools and tend to boost student test scores, at least for some participants. Readers are cautioned that this evidence is drawn from targeted voucher programs and may not apply to universal programs such as the one proposed for and subsequently rejected by the citizens of Utah. Part V concludes by encouraging more rigorous research on the impacts of voucher programs with various design features. II. SCHOOL VOUCHER PROGRAMS IN THE UNITED STATES A school voucher program is an arrangement whereby public funds are made available to qualified parents to cover some or all of the expenses associated with enrolling their child in a participating private school of their choosing. Privately funded scholarships are not school vouchers, although, like vouchers, they are used to allow disadvantaged students to gain access to private schools. The placement and funding of special needs students in private schools by public school districts also is not a voucher program, since district officials, and not parents, choose the school. The definitional aspects of school vouchers are the source of the funds (governmental), the purpose for which the funds are provided (to enroll a school-age child in a private school), and the party whose decisions fulfill that purpose (a parent or legal guardian of the child).5 According to this definition of school vouchers, twelve voucher programs had been established or were being implemented in the United States as of the fall of 2007. …

Abstract: 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 hlelps 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. ContributorsFelipe Barrera, Cristian Bellei, Eric P. Bettinger, Rajashri Chakrabarti, Geeta G. Kingdon, Michael Kremer, Norman LaRocque, Stephen Machin, Karthik Muralidhara, Thomas Nechyba, Harry A. Patrinos, Paul E. Peterson, Ludger Woessmann

Abstract: We ask whether a social contrast mechanism depresses the educational aspirations of students with high-achieving peers. We study two entire cohorts of students in the final grade of the Swedish comprehensive school with matched information on social origin and achievements (160,417 students, 829 schools). Controlling for school fixed effects and observed characteristics of students and families, we find that the propensity to make a high-aspiring choice of upper-secondary school program is lower for students with high-achieving schoolmates, given own achievement. While theoretically interesting, the effect is small compared to that of own achievement: Moving an average student from an average school to a school that lies one standard deviation lower in achievement increases the probability of a high-aspiring choice by three percentage points.

Abstract: The paper approaches the issue of school choice in an indirect manner by investigating the effectiveness of public, private government-dependent and private independent schools in 19 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries selected from the PISA 2000 survey for this purpose. In a multilevel approach we estimate these sector effects, controlling for sociological characteristics of students and parents, school composition, teaching and learning conditions of schools and students', and principals' perception of the climate of their schools. The main explanation of the gross differences in mathematical achievement is the better social composition of private schools, both government-dependent and independent, which is a clear consequence of school choice. But our analysis also reveals that private independent schools are less effective than public schools with the same students, parents, and social composition, while private dependent schools are more effective than comparable...