School Choice

Previous investigations into career and subject selection have provided insights into the range of influences on such choices. However, few studies have been carried out focussing on the process and context over time in which students make decisions about school subjects, post-school courses and careers. The current research initiated by the Tertiary Entrance Procedures Authority (TEPA) addresses similar issues from

American education policy at the elite level has coalesced around a consensus valuing " college and career readiness " as the primary metric and value for American schools. This " readiness " is often defined by economic outcomes or by standardized test measures (which serve as predictors for economic outcomes). Policy actors at the local, state, and national levels are pursuing more centralized methods to reach goals based on these value assumptions. At the same time, more individualized programs and more forms of school choice are being implemented across the nation. This theoretical paper explores criticisms of this approach from both the political left and right, as well as the inherent tension between the desire for centralized standardization and outcomes measured by economic outcomes on one hand, and the growing desire among families for individualized, varied, and self-directed schooling experiences on the other.

In this article, we focus on a statewide system of interdistrict open enrollment in Michigan, known as Schools of Choice. Our previous work indicated that students who take advantage of this program are disproportionately lower performing on state exams, come from lower-income families, and are more likely to be minority students. We estimated conditional bounds on these factors, as well as within-student variation in test scores, for the effect of participation in Schools of Choice, and find little evidence that student achievement is affected overall. We find little consistent evidence that subgroups of students based on race, gender or income benefit or lose disproportionately from the program, nor do students whose resident districts vary on key demographic or achievement characteristics.

Abstract. Course sequences are strands of courses in particular content areas that span a student's educational career. Courses that are differentiated and sequentially organized, such as mathematics and science course sequences, create opportunities for positional advantages in a ...

The purpose of this paper is to discuss charter schools in the United States and how it is different from the traditional public schools in terms of student performance in math and reading subjects. Several empirical studies have been discussed in this paper to provide support for charter schools in the United States. There are currently more than 6000 charter schools that represents about six percent of the U.S. public school system. Charter schools focus on personalized approach including smaller class sizes, more individual attention to and
strong parental involvement. Out of 41 areas from 22 states, 26 areas’ post learning gains for charter schools is more than traditional public schools. In reading, 23 regions have larger learning gains than traditional public schools. Charter school students outperform traditional public school students in state standardized tests. The charter schools produce 40 percent better results in both math and reading scores per dollar spent.

Objectives This study aims to determine if private school choice reduces the proclivity of students to commit crimes as adults. Methods We examine crime rates for young adults who experienced Milwaukee's citywide voucher program as high school students compared to matched public school peers using unique data collected as part of a longitudinal evaluation of the program. Results We find that mere exposure to private schooling through a voucher is associated with lower rates of criminal activity, but the relationship is not robust to different analytic samples. Students who used the program through 12th grade, however, were much less likely to have criminal records than their public school peers. These results are apparent when controlling for a robust set of student demographics, test scores, and parental characteristics. Conclusions We conclude that merely being exposed to private schooling for a short time through a voucher program may not have a significant impact on criminal activity, though persistently attending a private school through a voucher program can decrease subsequent crime rates.

This study was designed to develop a substantive theory that would explain the process through which a family makes educational choices in Western Australia. The grounded theory method was chosen for this research. The participants in the study were mainly parents of children in Catholic schools who were invited to assist in the research through purposive sampling. Further theoretical sampling

Since the first modern school choice laws were passed in the early 1990s,
access to educational options has grown tremendously. Today, more than
6,900 charter schools exist in the 44 states and the District of Columbia which
have charter school laws. These schools enroll more than 3.1 million children.
During the same time period, prevalence of private school choice programs
has grown dramatically with nearly 50 different programs in existence. Many
have sought to examine the impacts of school choice programs on students.
Indeed, there is a vigorous debate in the literature on this matter. This paper
explores this issue from a different angle—school finance. The design of
school choice programs, specifically how they are funded, has important
implications for the legality of a program and with issues related to equity.
These matters are incredibly important as states continually grapple with
questions related to adequacy and equity in school finance. As school choice
programs continue to expand, they offer an opportunity not just to expand
educational options, as proponents suggest, but to improve how we fund
education for all students. This paper explores the issues related to school
finance and school choice litigation, then offers a school choice model that
might be used to increase equity in finance and in educational options.

The school choice problem concerns the design and implementation of matching mechanisms that produce school assignments for students within a given public school district. In this note we define a simple student-optimal criterion that is not met by any previously employed mechanism in the school choice literature. We then use this criterion to adapt a well-known combinatorial optimization technique (Hungarian algorithm) to the school choice problem.

The German National Educational Panel Study covers educational processes during Kindergarten and elementary school age in two stages: “Kindergarten and transition to elementary school” and “elementary school and transition to lower secondary school.” One cohort covers both of these two stages, starting in winter 2010/2011 with a cluster sample of 3,000 target children at about age 4 in Kindergarten. When most of these children enter school, the cohort will be more than doubled by integrating their classmates into the survey. In addition to direct assessment of children’s competencies, their parents are interviewed and teachers and principals fill out self-administered questionnaires. In these stages, assessments focus on early scientific and mathematical literacy as well as language competencies (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, phonological awareness). We survey the structure and aspects of the quality of Kindergarten and elementary school, families, and nonformal learning environments. Information on parents’ socioeconomic status and their evaluation of decision-relevant aspects allows us to model school choice and disentangle primary and secondary effects of stratification. Theoretically relevant aspects of migrants’ situation are surveyed. Further aspects are children’s health, social competencies, and the different care settings. Bildungsprozesse im Kindergarten und in der Grundschule werden im Nationalen Bildungspanel durch zwei Etappen abgedeckt: „Kindergarten und Übergang in die Grundschule“ und „Grundschule und der Übergang zur Sekundarstufe“. Diese beiden Etappen haben eine gemeinsame Startkohorte, die im Winter 2010/2011 mit einer Clusterstichprobe von 3.000 Kindergartenkindern im Alter von ca. 4 Jahren startet. Bei der Einschulung dieser Kinder wird der Stichprobenumfang mehr als verdoppelt, da nun auch deren Mitschüler in die Studie aufgenommen werden. Zusätzlich zur direkten Erfassung der kindlichen Kompetenzen werden die Eltern der Kinder telefonisch befragt und die pädagogischen Fachkräfte und Leitungen der Kindergärten bzw. Schulen füllen Fragebögen aus. In den beiden Etappen werden primär frühe naturwissenschaftliche und mathematische Fähigkeiten sowie Sprachkompetenzen (z. B. Wortschatz, Grammatik, phonologische Bewusstheit, Lesekompetenz) erhoben. Zudem werden Struktur- und Qualitätsaspekte von Kindergärten, Grundschulen, Familien sowie von informellen/non-formalen Lernumwelten erfasst. Die Erfassung des sozioökonomischen Status der Eltern und deren Bewertung relevanter Aspekte von Schulwahlentscheidungen ermöglichen die analytische Unterscheidung zwischen primären und sekundären Effekten der sozialen Herkunft. Zudem werden theoriegeleitet migrationsrelevante Indikatoren von Kindern, Eltern und pädagogischen Fachkräften erhoben. Weitere erfasste Bereiche sind Sozialkompetenzen, der Gesundheitszustand und die Betreuungssituation der Kinder.

In recent weeks we have seen President, Donald J. Trump, and his appointed Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, attempt to dismantle the very foundations on which public education was built upon. According to a draft of the President's education budget proposal, which was obtained by the Washington Post, Trump plans to cut federal education programs to the tune of $10.6 billion. In this executive push for school choice, Trump plans on eliminating 22 federally funded programs while allocating most of the budget cuts to expanding charter schools and funding school vouchers for private and religious schools. These budget cuts are expected to affect the families of disadvantaged students as well as many college graduates that have acquired student loan debt.

Charter schools have emerged as the most prominent manifestation of educational reform in the United States. As an alternative to traditional public schools, charter schools have been the schools of choice for Somalis. Through in-depth interviews, this phenomenological study explored the experiences of a dozen Somali parents of children who attended Somali-operated charter schools in Minnesota, United States. The study found that the schools protected Islamic values and culture, functioned as an extended home for Somali children, and facilitated communication considered essential to the social well-being of resettled refugees. Additionally, the study shed light on the importance of religious principles and cultural values in shaping parents’ choice of schools for their children.

Within the Italian educational system, the transition from lower to upper secondary school constitute a crucial site to study the mechanisms at stakes in the reproduction of educational inequalities. Upper secondary track choices constitute indeed a crucial determinant of educational attainment as well as of individual future social position. Aim of this essay is to offer an in-depth analysis of one among the processes that may hinder the realization of equal educational opportunities at this branching point: teachers' guidance advices. Based on an ethnographic study carried out in two lower secondary schools in Milan, IT, the article explores the criteria teachers use to formulate recommendations to support their students upper secondary track choices. In particular, the essay show the logics underpinning teachers' tendency to guide foreign origin students toward vocational and technical school tracks.

This study determined the student profile and enrollment of the three Universities in the University Belt. It also found out the respondents’ level of consideration concerning the institutional image indicators that served as basis for attracting prospective entrants. Descriptive statistics revealed the following: most of the respondents belonged to families with five members and lived in family-owned houses in the cities of Manila and Quezon; most of the respondents were taking up Medicine-related courses; most of FEU and UE respondents belonged to less-than-Php 30,000-monthly family income bracket, while UST respondents belonged to greater-than-Php 100,000-monthly family income; and UST had the most number of respondents with family members studying in the same school. A Geographical Information System-generated map also showed that there were more respondents from Marikina than from the nearby municipality of San Juan. For non-Metro Manila settlers, most of the respondents were from the provinces of CALABARZON (Region 4-A) or Central Luzon (Region 3). The three sets of respondents considered five indicators but had different levels of considerations in six indicators. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that five out of six indicators were found to have a significant difference in the level of consideration. Further comparison was utilized through the use of Tukey-HSD. Thus, the hypothesis stating that there is no significant difference in the level of consideration of the respondents from the three Universities regarding institutional-image indicators is partially upheld.

El presente documento aporta antecedentes nuevos sobre los proyectos educativos declarados por los establecimientos, permitiendo una primera aproximación descriptiva sobre dichos documentos. A partir de información extraída del sitio web Más Información, Mejor Educación (www.mime.mineduc.cl) del Ministerio de Educación (MINEDUC), se presenta un análisis de los énfasis declarados en los proyectos educativos, relacionándolos con cinco elementos relevantes del sistema escolar chileno: el mercado educativo, la dependencia administrativa de los establecimientos, la libertad de elección y la libertad de enseñanza, el derecho a la educación, y la relación entre el accountability educacional y la calidad educativa.

Harry Brighouse's School Choice and School Justice is one of the best works of philosophy of education I have ever read, and possibly the best book on school choice ever written. It is also a valuable contribution to the important enterprise of making a place in political ...

While single-sex public schools face much criticism, many Black communities see in them a great promise: that they can remedy a crisis for their young men. Black Boys Apart reveals triumph, hope, and heartbreak at two all-male schools, a public high school and a charter high school, drawing on Freeden Blume Oeur’s ethnographic work. We meet young men who felt their schools empowered and emasculated them, parents who were frustrated with co-ed schools, teachers who helped pave the road to college, and administrators who saw in Black male academies the advantages of privatizing education.

While the two schools have distinctive histories and ultimately charted different paths, they were both shaped by the convergence of neoliberal ideologies and a politics of Black respectability. As Blume Oeur reveals, all-boys education is less a school reform initiative and instead joins a legacy of efforts to reform Black manhood during periods of stark racial inequality. Black male academies join long-standing attempts to achieve racial uplift in Black communities, but in ways that elevate exceptional young men and aggravate divisions within those communities.

Black Boys Apart shows all-boys schools to be an odd mix of democratic empowerment and market imperatives, racial segregation and intentional sex separation, strict discipline and loving care. Challenging narratives that endorse these schools for nurturing individual resilience in young Black men, this perceptive and penetrating ethnography argues for a holistic approach in which Black communities and their allies promote a collective resilience.

In districts from Chicago to New York to Washington, DC, neighborhood public schools are being forced to compete with charter schools for students and resources, often under the threat of school closure. In Compete or Close, Julia A. McWilliams provides a compelling ethnographic study of one such school, a neighborhood high school in Philadelphia—a district where rising privatization and chronic underfunding cast these common tensions into sharp relief. The book poses two questions: What strategies do schools deploy to minimize market risk and signal their value to stakeholders—district administrators, funders, parents, and students? And how do these strategies conflict with the schools’ mission to serve all children?

An astute and compassionate observer, McWilliams paints a devastating portrait of a neighborhood public school under siege, in which educators are panicked by the threat of closure and determined to survive at all costs. McWilliams’s book is a powerful indictment of the role of competition in American education today and offers empirical evidence and a theoretical understanding of the mechanisms through which market forces may conflict with the preservation of education as a public good.

Ours is a world of massive inequality, in terms of both opportunity and the outcomes that shape well-being. We focus in this White Paper on the kinds of inequalities of opportunity (and in some instances, outcomes) that matter within the educational domain. As we proceed, we focus primarily on synthesizing research concerning inequalities of race, ethnicity, class, and to a lesser extent gender and ability, in education and schools.

"In her groundbreaking and innovative study, the author takes us on a fascinating journey through some of Madrid's multilingual and multicultural schools and reveals the role played by linguistic practices in the construction of inequality through such processes as what she calls "de-capitalization" and "ethnicization". Through a critical sociolinguistic and discourse analysis of the data collected in an ethnographic study, the book shows the exclusion caused by monolingualizing tendencies and ideologies of deficit in education and society.
The book opens a timely discussion of the management of diversity in multilingual and multicultural classrooms, both for countries with a long tradition of migration flows and for those where the phenomenon is relatively new, as is the case in Spain. This study of linguistic practices in the classroom makes clear the need to rethink some key linguistic concepts, such as practice, competence, discourse, and language, and to integrate different approaches in qualitative research.
The volume is essential reading for students and researchers working in sociolinguistics, education and related areas, as well as for all teachers and social workers who deal with the increasing heterogeneity of our late modern societies in their work."

Summarising the arguments of How Not to Be A Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent (Routledge Falmer 2003), the article discusses three ques-tions. The first is whether parents who disapprove of elite private schools to such an extent that they would vote to ban them ...