CAROLINE HOXBY, WOULD SCHOOL CHOICE CHANGE THE TEACHING PROFESSION? (Hoover Institute, Education Matters More, Spring 2001)
This paper investigates whehther schools that face stronger school choice based initiatives have greater demand for certain teacher characteristics and (if so) which characteristics. See The Hoover Institute's Education Matters More, Spring 2001.
MICHAEL PONS, SCHOOL VOUCHERS: THE EMERGING RECORD (NEA, 2000)
Proponents of private school tuition vouchers make a wide array of claims about their benefits. They claim that competition will spur public school improvement, vouchers will reduce the cost of education, students who get vouchers will show dramatic achievement gains, and vouchers are a success in most industrialized nations. None of this has happened.
Real evidence of how vouchers work now exists. Private school tuition vouchers began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, beginning in 1990 and were followed by two other voucher plans in Cleveland, Ohio, and in the state of Florida. Private scholarship programs also have a clear track record.
DAVID BOSITIS. JOINT CENTER FOR POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC STUDY. NATIONAL OPINION POLL 2000: POLITICS
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has tracked African American public opinion since 1984, noting how their views of candidates, issues, and party politics compare with those of the general population. This document reports on the findings of the Joint Center’s 2000 poll. Among the key findings this year are the following: Education, health care, Social Security, and taxes—all issues that have been publicly debated by the candidates— are ranked by our respondents as the most important public issues. African Americans continue to be supportive of school vouchers, one of Bush’s education proposals, with respondents in households with children being most supportive.
CATO INSTITUTE. FRANK HELLER. LESSONS FROM MAINE: EDUCATION VOUCHERS FOR STUDENTS SINCE 1873, BRIEFING PAPER NO. 66 (September 10, 2001).
Since 1873 Maine has financed the education of thousands of kindergarten through 12th grade students in private schools. In fact, the state pays tuition for 35 percent of all students enrolled in Maine's private schools. The tuition program enables parents in towns without a traditional public school to choose a school from a list of approved private and public schools, enroll their child, and have the town pay that child's tuition up to an authorized amount. The town then receives full or partial reimbursement from the state. In the fall of 1999, 5,614 students from 55 different communities attended private schools through this program, while 30,412 attended nearby public schools. Schools of choice ranged from regular public schools to local academies such as Waynflete School in Portland, Maine, to boarding schools ranging from Choate and Phillips Exeter in New England to Vail Valley Academy in Colorado. Data from the Maine Department of Education suggest that the tuition program costs roughly $6,000 per student, or 20 percent less than Maine's average per pupil expenditure for public education.
BRIAN P. GILL, P. MICHAEL TIMPANE, KAREN E. ROSS, DOMINIC J. BREWER. RHETORIC VERSUS REALITY: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT VOUCHERS AND CHARTER SCHOOLS (Dec. 2001).
Download the summary on the left. See and order the entire report at the site listed below.
(From the summary: Conceptually and structurally, vouchers and charters challenge the “common school” model that has been the basis for the American public-education system for most of the nation’s history. Opponents fear that privatizing the governance and operation of schools will undermine their public purposes; supporters believe that autonomously operated voucher and charter schools can serve the public purposes of the educational system even though they are not owned and operated by government. Policymakers need empirical information on the effects of vouchers and charters if they are to assess their merits and resolve this dispute.
This book has four aims. First, we identify and articulate the range of empirical questions that ought to be answered to fully assess the wisdom of policies promoting vouchers or charter schools, thereby establishing a theoretical framework that accounts for the multiple purposes of public education. Second, we examine the existing empirical evidence on these questions, providing a broad assessment of what is currently known about the effects of vouchers and charters in terms of academic achievement and otherwise. Third, we discuss the important empirical questions that are as yet unresolved and consider the prospects for answering them in the future. Fourth, we explore the design details of voucher and charter policies, concluding with recommendations for policymakers considering their enactment.)
Brief[s] for Respondent and Petitioners, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, ___ U.S. ____ (2002) (Nos. 00-1751, 00-1777 & 00-1779)
On Wednesday, February 20, 2002, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the most important education case since Brown v. Board of Education. Ohio's chief counsel, Judith French, Solicitor General Olson, and David Young (representing another group of interveners), spoke on behalf of Cleveland parents and the State of Ohio. The National Education Association's Robert Chanin and the American Federation of Teachers' Marvin Frankel argued against the scholarship program.
Each party presented the Court a brief that lays out their arguments. The briefs begin with "Question(s) Presented" which tries to crystallize their best arguments.
JAY P GREEN, PHD, AN EVALUATION OF THE FLORIDA A-PLUS ACCOUNTABILITY AND SCHOOL CHOICE PROGRAM (Manhattan Institute, February 2001)
This report examines whether FL schools that faced the prospect of having vouchers offered to their students experienced larger improvements in their FCAT scores than other schools. The results show that schools receiving a failing grade from the state in 1999 and whose students would have been offered tuition vouchers if they failed a second time achieved test score gains more than twice as large as those achieved by other schools. While schools with lower previous FCAT scores across all state-assigned grades improved their test scores, schools with failing grades that faced the prospect of vouchers exhibited especially large gains. For more see The Manhattan Institute
See also the School Reformers' website resources room
