School Choice and Social Controversy
School Choice and Social Controversy

Author: Stephen D. Sugarman

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2011-12-01

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 0815721080

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In this important new volume, distinguished legal and public policy scholars address issues that are critical to the successful drafting and implementation of school choice programs, yet are usually overlooked in the choice debate. They explore whether school choice is a threat or an opportunity to the many children who are largely deprived of choice today and they offer a variety of perspectives, with some authors enthusiastic, others more skeptical. The book begins with a discussion of the types and extent of school choice, what is known about its consequences, and how politics has influenced its development. It then focuses on three important public policy issues: how school choice can revolutionize the way schools are financed, what policy interventions are necessary to increase the supply of choice schools, and how choice programs can be held accountable to parents and the state without undermining institutional autonomy. The book addresses legal issues, including whether public and private choice schools will be required to observe student and teacher rights generally recognized in traditional public schools, how the religion and speech clauses of the First Amendment may affect the participation of religious schools in school choice programs, whether school choice will enhance or aggravate opportunities for racial justice, what the implications of school choice are for teacher unions and collective bargaining, and whether children with disabilities will be accommodated in school choice programs under federal disability law. Throughout the book, the authors offer recommendations for public policy development. The contributors are Jeffrey Henig, Robert Bulman and David L. Kirp, Paul T. Hill, Robert M. O'Neil, Jesse H. Choper, Betsy Levin, William G. Buss, and Laura F. Rothstein. Stephen D. Sugarman is Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Frank R. Kemerer is Regents Professor and director of the Center for

The Choice We Face
The Choice We Face

Author: Jon Hale

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0807087483

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A comprehensive history of school choice in the US, from its birth in the 1950s as the most effective weapon to oppose integration to its lasting impact in reshaping the public education system today. Most Americans today see school choice as their inalienable right. In The Choice We Face, scholar Jon Hale reveals what most fail to see: school choice is grounded in a complex history of race, exclusion, and inequality. Through evaluating historic and contemporary education policies, Hale demonstrates how reframing the way we see school choice represents an opportunity to evolve from complicity to action. The idea of school choice, which emerged in the 1950s during the civil rights movement, was disguised by American rhetoric as a symbol of freedom and individualism. Shaped by the ideas of conservative economist Milton Friedman, the school choice movement was a weapon used to oppose integration and maintain racist and classist inequalities. Still supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, this policy continues to shape American education in nuanced ways, Hale shows—from the expansion of for-profit charter schools and civil rights–based reform efforts to the appointment of Betsy DeVos. Exposing the origins of a movement that continues to privilege middle- to upper-class whites while depleting the resources for students left behind, The Choice We Face is a bold, definitive new history that promises to challenge long-held assumptions on education and redefines our moment as an opportunity to save it—a choice we will not have for much longer.

School Choice
School Choice

Author: Herbert J. Walberg

Publisher: Cato Institute

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1933995041

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School Choice: The Findings is the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey available, summarizing the research on charter schools, vouchers, and public versus private school effectiveness, from one of the country's most distinguished education scholars. The focus is on rigorous studies' those using randomized control groups (as in medical research), those that monitor achievement changes over time, and those based on large numbers of students.

Exploring the School Choice Universe
Exploring the School Choice Universe

Author: Kevin G. Welner

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2013-02-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1623960452

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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.

School Choice in China
School Choice in China

Author: Wu Xiaoxin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1134675941

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School Choice in China explores the major characteristics of schooling options in China, highlighting how largely middle-class parents exploit their cultural, economic and social capital for their children's admission into choice schools. It highlights how payments such as choice fees, donations, prize-winning certificates and awards, as well as the use of guanxi, result in Chinese school choice as a parent-driven, bottom-up movement. The author also explores how schools and local governments cash in on the school choice fever in order to obtain significant economic returns, leading to policies that accommodate the needs of mostly middle-class families. He argues that although this system seems to create winners among the parties involved, it exacerbates the educational inequality that already exists in Chinese society. Chapters include: Positional competition for cultural capital Exploitation of social capital Economics of school choice Class reproduction through parental choice This book is not simply a detailed analysis of Chinese school choice practices, but also a study of the competitive middle class search for advantage for their children. As such it will be beneficial to undergraduates, postgraduates, education professionals, policy makers, and anyone with an interest in education, sociology, social policy, and the rise and future of China.

The Teacher Wars
The Teacher Wars

Author: Dana Goldstein

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0345803620

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today—and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools. “[A] lively account." —New York Times Book Review In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change.

School Choice and the Betrayal of Democracy
School Choice and the Betrayal of Democracy

Author: Robert Asen

Publisher: Penn State University Press

Published: 2021-10-04

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780271091396

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Evidence shows that the increasing privatization of K-12 education siphons resources away from public schools, resulting in poorer learning conditions, underpaid teachers, and greater inequality. But, as Robert Asen reveals here, the damage that market-based education reform inflicts on society runs much deeper. At their core, these efforts are antidemocratic. Arguing that democratic communities and public education need one another, Asen examines the theory driving privatization, the neoliberalism of Milton and Rose Friedman, as well as the case for school choice promoted by former secretary of education Betsy DeVos and the controversial voucher program of former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. What Asen finds is that a market-based approach holds not just a different view of distributing education but a different vision of society. When the values of the market--choice, competition, and self-interest--shape national education, that policy produces individuals, Asen contends, with no connections to community and no obligations to one another. The result is a society at odds with democracy. Probing and thought-provoking, School Choice and the Betrayal of Democracy features interviews with local, on-the-ground advocates for public education and offers a countering vision of democratic education--one oriented toward civic relationships, community, and equality. This book is essential reading for policymakers, advocates of public education, citizens, and researchers.

Families and Schools in a Pluralistic Society
Families and Schools in a Pluralistic Society

Author: Nancy Feyl Chavkin

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1993-02-02

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0791498840

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Recent research identifies increased parent involvement in education as a promising method to bolster student achievement. Statistics show that while many traditional white, middle class families have found ways to be involved with their children's schooling, our nation now needs to find ways to include more minority parents in their children's education. Most educators and parents would agree that minority parent involvement in education is essential; the mechanics of developing sensitive, realistic, and workable home-school relationships are more elusive. It requires a concerted effort by all involved to understand more about the complex parent-school relationship and to develop specific plans to help families. This comprehensive volume features substantial material from the nation's most renowned research projects on parent involvement—Stanford University's Center for the Study of Families, Children and Youth, the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools, the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, and the National Catholic Education Association. In addition to a section on research, the book includes a section on practice that presents research-tested strategies on working with minority parents (Asian, American Indian, Hispanic, African American, and other minority groups). The book concludes with a section on future challenges that educators must confront and appendices on promising national programs and helpful resource materials.

Freedom of Choice
Freedom of Choice

Author: Jim Carl

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0313393273

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This book reveals that, far from being the result of a groundswell of support for parental choice in American education, the origins of school vouchers are seated in identity politics, religious schooling, and educational entrepreneurship. Inserting much-needed historical context into the voucher debates, Freedom of Choice: Vouchers in American Education treats school vouchers as a series of social movements set within the context of evolving American conservatism. The study ranges from the use of tuition grants in the 1950s and early 1960s in the interest of fostering segregation to the wider acceptance of vouchers in the 1990s as a means of counteracting real and perceived shortcomings of urban public schools. The rise of school vouchers, author Jim Carl suggests, is best explained as a mechanism championed by four distinct groups—white supremacists in the South, supporters of parochial school in the North, minority advocates of community schools in the nation's big cities, and political conservatives of both major parties. Though freedom was the rallying cry, this book shows that voucher supporters had more specific goals: continued racial segregation of public education, tax support for parochial schools, aid to urban community schools, and opening up the public school sector to educational entrepreneurs.

The Economics of School Choice
The Economics of School Choice

Author: Caroline M. Hoxby

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0226355349

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Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has declared school voucher programs constitutional, the many unanswered questions concerning the potential effects of school choice will become especially pressing. Contributors to this volume draw on state-of-the-art economic methods to answer some of these questions, investigating the ways in which school choice affects a wide range of issues. Combining the results of empirical research with analyses of the basic economic forces underlying local education markets, The Economics of School Choice presents evidence concerning the impact of school choice on student achievement, school productivity, teachers, and special education. It also tackles difficult questions such as whether school choice affects where people decide to live and how choice can be integrated into a system of school financing that gives children from different backgrounds equal access to resources. Contributors discuss the latest findings on Florida's school choice program as well as voucher programs and charter schools in several other states. The resulting volume not only reveals the promise of school choice, but examines its pitfalls as well, showing how programs can be designed that exploit the idea's potential but avoid its worst effects. With school choice programs gradually becoming both more possible and more popular, this book stands out as an essential exploration of the effects such programs will have, and a necessary resource for anyone interested in the idea of school choice.