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The Worst Choice For School Choice: Tuition Tax Credits Are A Bad Idea And Direct Funding Is Wiser, Michael J. Broyde, Anna G. Gabianelli

Faculty Articles

School choice is on the rise, and states use various mechanisms to implement it. One prevalent mechanism is also a uniquely problematic one: the tax credit. Tax credits are deficient at equitably distributing a benefit like school choice; they are costly, and they invite fraud. Instead of using tax credits, states opting for school choice programs should use direct funding. Direct funding will more efficiently achieve the goals of school choice because it can be regulated like any other government benefit, even if it ends up subsidizing religious private schools.

Tax credits’ prevalence is not inexplicable, of course. It is …

Caribbean Immigrant Parents And Elementary School Choice In New York City, Keshia T. James

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For the over 3 million immigrants of New York City, the education system is one of the many areas they must navigate in their transition to the United States (MOIA annual Report, 2018). However, for the Caribbean immigrant navigating the school system is especially hard. Of the five boroughs in New York City, Brooklyn has the second-largest immigrant population with approximately 28% of the immigrants in the borough from the Caribbean. The 2018 United States Census shows that Caribbean immigrants account for about 258000 of the approximately 900000 immigrants in Brooklyn. The racial and cultural diversity among Caribbean immigrants is …

Community Insurgency: Constituency, School Choice, And The Common Good, Andrew Pendola, Bryan Mann, David T. Marshall, Jason Bryant

Democracy and Education

This study explores the ways in which the democratic notion of "the people" may be enacted in the school choice arena. Through an investigation of a charter school movement in a rural and segregated district in the Deep South, we explore themes of the constituent paradox that enabled the community to move beyond individual interests towards an expression of the common good. It is argued that for "the people" to be invoked via the democratic claim, they must identify more deeply than the institutions of their representation and recognize an expanded form of individualism defined through participation over consumption.

Education Freedom And Student Achievement: Is More School Choice Associated With Higher State-Level Performance On The Naep?, Patrick J. Wolf, Jay P. Greene, Matthew Ladner, James D. Paul

School Choice Demonstration Project

School choice is on the rise in many states. Since the start of the new millennium, many states have launched or expanded private school choice options, permitted and expanded independently operated public charter schools, eased restrictions on homeschooling, and enacted policies that allow and encourage various forms of public school choice. One thing that is not on the rise, unfortunately, is average student scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Student performance on the assessments, typically called “The Nation’s Report Card,” were flat from 2001 until 2015 and have dropped slightly in both 2017 and 2019.

Pioneers Or Profiteers? Examining Pennsylvania's Cyber Charter Landscape Through The Lens Of Principal-Agent Theory, Greg Mayle

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

Pennsylvania’s current cyber charter school landscape is often discussed as an area in which reform is needed, but political bickering and biased arguments have rendered meaningful change nonexistent. This research project seeks to resolve this logjam by examining the issue from a different perspective than that which has been utilized in many previous studies. By viewing the existing landscape through the lens of principal-agent theory, one can begin to understand the legislative intent behind the creation of cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania. Once this intent is known, assessment of actual outcomes becomes possible. This study collected data relating to academic …

The Feasibility Of Creating And Sustaining Charter Schools In The Rural United States, Mcallister Hall

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Many parents in rural areas desire to make a choice for their child to have an education different from what the local TPS can provide, but the choice is not available (McCarthy, 2016, Bagley, Woods, & Glatter, 2001). Communities play a large role in the success of both TPSs and charter schools, especially in rural areas (Johnson & Howley, 2015, Stuit & Doan, 2012). In many cases, community characteristics impact student performance as much as the school characteristics (Bodine et al., 2008, Reeves, 2012). The research presented in this study acts as a feasibility study of the potential for rural …

Caring Choices? Supporting And Dreaming With Students In New York City’S Stratifying High School Admissions System, Megan R. Moskop

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In New York City, all eighth graders attending public school must apply for high school. They have 400 schools from which to choose, and they must create a ranked list of twelve choices. They are then matched to one school. The results of this process play a large role in creating one of the most segregated and unequal school systems in the country. In “Caring choices? Supporting and dreaming with students in New York City’s stratifying high school admissions system,” I share an autoethnographic account that spans ten years of work as an activist educator striving both to support students …

Political Culture And Policy: The Impact Of Culture And Values On School Choice Legislation, Heather Leigh Neal

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Policy actors unite political culture, power, and values to make substantial decisions which are often subjective in nature. Politics and policy are about collective decisions, which rely on the arrangement of a group of people. As values can influence policy actors in their attempt to solve problems, it is important for policymakers to establish a balance among the most essential values. A qualitative case study approach was used to investigate how, and what ways, political culture influenced how state stakeholders interpreted or implemented policy. Power and values were explored as both can connect for the implementation of policy. If values, …

Community Schools: A More Effective Solution For School Improvement In Tennessee, Sarah Feroza Freeland

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

School Choice In Indianapolis: Effects Of Charter, Magnet, Private, And Traditional Public Schools, Mark Borends, R. Joseph Waddington

Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation Faculty Publications

School choice researchers are often limited to comparing one type of choice with another (e.g., charter schools vs. traditional public schools). One area researchers have not examined is the effects of different school types within the same urban region. We fill this gap by analyzing longitudinal data for students (grades 3–8) in Indianapolis, using student fixed effects models to estimate the impacts of students switching from a traditional public school to a charter, magnet, Catholic, or other private school. We find that students experience no differences in their achievement gains after transferring from a traditional public school to a charter …

School Choice Vouchers And Special Education In Indiana Catholic Diocesan Schools, William H. Blackwell, June M. Robinson

Journal of Catholic Education

Catholic schools are now located at a crossroads of school choice voucher programs and special education services. With enrollment in Catholic schools declining over the past several decades, voucher programs that allow parents to use public funds for tuition at private schools – including tuition for students with disabilities – could possibly help to steady or even reverse this decline. This study examined the impact of Indiana’s statewide voucher program on Catholic schools, student enrollment, and special education services in three large diocesan school systems. The findings address issues related to enrollment growth, changing student population characteristics, special education services, …

You Can’T Always Get What You Want: Using “Broken Lotteries” To Check The Validity Of Charter School Evaluations Using Matching Designs, Leesa M. Foreman, Kaitlin P. Anderson, Gary W. Ritter, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

We consider situations in which public charter school lotteries are neither universally conducted nor consistently documented. Such lotteries produce “broken” Randomized Control Trials, but provide opportunities to assess the internal validity of quasi-experimental research designs. Here, we present the results of a statewide charter school evaluation using a broad-based student matching evaluation design, and run two additional analyses using the charter application wait-lists as robustness checks. Our additional models, which address concerns of self-selection by using only charter applicants as matched comparison students, yield similar effect estimates and thus provide support for the use of matching designs in charter school …

How Has The Louisiana Scholarship Program Affected Students? A Comprehensive Summary Of Effects After Three Years, Jonathan N. Mills, Patrick J. Wolf

School Choice Demonstration Project

School choice reforms comprise a broad category of policies aimed at improving public education through the introduction of market forces that expand customer choice and competition between schools. Here we summarize our research to date on the effects of a large statewide school voucher initiative, the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), and draw the following conclusions: • Overall, participating in the LSP had no statistically significant impact on student English Language Arts (ELA) or math scores after using an LSP scholarship for three years. • The subgroup of students who were lower achieving before applying to the program did show significant …

The Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Student Achievement After Three Years, Jonathan N. Mills, Patrick J. Wolf

School Choice Demonstration Project

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) offers publicly-funded vouchers to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250 percent of the poverty line, allowing them to enroll in participating private schools. Established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012. This report examines the experimental effects of using an LSP scholarship to enroll in one’s first choice private school on student achievement in the three years following the program’s expansion. Large negative achievement effects in the first year of the program appear to have been followed by improvement in the …

Supplying Choice: An Analysis Of School Participation Decisions In Voucher Programs In Dc, Indiana, And Louisiana, Yujie Sude, Corey A. Deangelis, Patrick J. Wolf

School Choice Demonstration Project

Since school voucher funds are public, policymakers fiercely debate how those funds should be spent. A goal of many decision-makers is to ensure that every private school option is “highquality” through program accountability regulations. Private schools, however, have a say in the matter. They can decide whether or not to participate in a private school choice program and likely factor the type and level of program regulations into that decision. We examine the impacts of private school regulations on the supply-side of voucher programs in D.C., Indiana, and Louisiana. Private schools value their autonomy. Therefore, we expect that regulatory burden …

Special Education Identification In The Louisiana Scholarship Program, Sivan Tuchman, Patrick J. Wolf

School Choice Demonstration Project

The debate over school vouchers continues as more states offer government dollars to fund private schooling for students as a method of improving choice and quality in K-12 education. Previous research in the charter school sector has found that special education enrollment discrepancies between charters and traditional public schools is likely due to a mixture in parental choice making, differential identification practices, and the removal of special education labels. This study is the first experimental analysis of the impact of a enrollment in a private school choice program on special education identification and de-identification. Using data for almost 2,000 students …

No, Education Isn't The Civil Rights Issue Of Our Time, Dave Powell

Education Faculty Publications

George W. Bush said it as he warned us about "the soft bigotry of low expectations." Barack Obama said it. So did Mitt Romney, Arne Duncan, and John McCain.

And now Donald Trump is saying it, too. In his first joint-session address to Congress, President Trump promised that "our children will grow up in a nation of miracles" and added the familiar kicker: "Education is the civil rights issue of our time." He said it right before he announced his plan to ask Congress to pass new legislation supporting school choice. His idea of a school reform "miracle," apparently, is …

Betsy Devos Is No Ruby Bridges, Dave Powell

Education Faculty Publications

So maybe you saw this cartoon that was drawn by Glenn McCoy for the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat under the headline "Trying to Trash Betsy DeVos." If you didn't, take a look.

In the cartoon, of course, you see little Betsy DeVos walking to school, book in hand, surrounded by faceless men who are there to protect her. It seems to barely be working: there is profanity scrawled on the wall ("NEA"!; "Conservative"!; an anarchy symbol) and what appears to be a really juicy, nasty tomato thrown against the wall. For context, you might also be interested in looking at this …

"Playing The Game Or "Buying In": Charter School Teachers And Professionalism In An Era Of Choice And Accountability, Beth Louise Wright

Dissertations

Charter schools were initially created with the intention of empowering teachers to implement school and classroom strategies in accordance with their educational expertise. Such autonomy and respect for teacher expertise indicates a commitment to teacher professionalism. Yet charter schools have also have higher rates of teacher turnover and hire fewer credentialed, experienced teachers. In the context of shifting and contested notions of teacher professionalism, charter schools provide insight into how teachers fare under contemporary educational policy arrangements. This comparative qualitative case study investigates how charter schools have lived up to their theoretical promise for teacher professionalism. The study finds that …

Agent-Based Overlapping Generations Modeling For Educational Policy Analysis, Connie Hou-Ning Wang

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Educational systems are complex adaptive systems (CAS). The macroeffects of an educational policy emerge from and depend on individual students' reactions to the policy. However, educational policymakers traditionally rely on equation-based models, which are deficient in reflecting the work of microbehaviors. Using inappropriate tools to make policies may be a reason why there were many unintended educational consequences in history. A proper methodology to design and analyze policies for complex educational systems is agent-based modeling (ABM). Grounded in the theories of CAS and computational irreducibility, ABM is capable of connecting microbehaviors with macropatterns. The purpose of this study was to …

Losing My Religion? The Impact Of Spiritual Cues On Noncognitive Skills, Daniel H. Bowen, Albert Cheng

Journal of Catholic Education

Studies consistently show that Catholic schools produce positive impacts on educational outcomes. Many charter school networks in the United States now provide, what are essentially, secularized versions of the Catholic education model. However, charter schools cannot legally replicate the overt religious curriculum and mission of Catholic schools. Although difficult to disentangle its impacts from confounding variables, research suggests that religiosity is a positive predictor of educational outcomes. This relationship might suggest that religious-based education produces effects on outcomes of public value that could be difficult to replicate in secularized contexts. To examine this question we conducted an experiment where 180 …

How Has The Louisiana Scholarship Program Affected Students? A Comprehensive Summary Of Effects After Two Years, Jonathan N. Mills, Anna J. Egalite, Patrick J. Wolf

School Choice Demonstration Project

Louisiana, a state whose educational performance has lagged behind national averages for decades, began its experiment with publicly financed scholarships for students to attend private schools in 2008. The pilot version of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) was expanded statewide with the passage of Act 2 of the 2012 Louisiana state legislative session. Nearly 10,000 students applied to the expanded program in 2012-13, with roughly 5,000 applicants receiving scholarships. The program has continued its rapid expansion every year since then, with nearly 7,500 scholarships awarded in the 2014-15 school year.

Mothers Who Choose Traditional Public Education In Times Of Economic Stress, Criticism, And District Reform, Brian W. Davis

Dissertations

As districts attempt to achieve higher accountability for student results while making complex decisions to balance budgets, it has become increasingly more common to restructure or reorganize educational delivery systems in ways that affect children and their families. Understanding how families and, in particular, mothers translate their experiences with structural and other changes enacted by the schools serving their children can assist in defining a new strategic direction of renewal, growth, and revitalization.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of 18 mothers, and their children, who were participants in multiple school reform initiatives in an …

Impacts Of Public School Choice Act Of 2013, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

The Public School Choice Act of 2013 (Act 1227) allows students to transfer to a nonresident district. Previous school choice law restrictions based on race, were removed in the new law. As a result, concerns have been raised about the possible negative impacts of choice on districts’ racial balance. This brief addresses these concerns by examining the impact of the Public School Choice Act of 2013 on district enrollment and racial integration.

Wide As The Waters: Comparing Student Performance In Alabama And Florida From 1992-2011, Kellie Slappey Nothstine

Master's Theses

The school choice movement has been making significant traction within the United States in the last decade and a record number of states have implemented school choice programs that introduce competition to the traditional public schools and treat education like a market. The marketization of education and making traditional public school truly compete against alternative schooling options is more often discussed in theory but in reality is infrequently applied on a large scale. In an attempt to truly gauge the advantages, disadvantages, and real life application of what can result when market forces are applied to a state’s education system …

Two Models Of Teacher Accountability Toward An Explanation For The Disappointing Results Of Some Market-Based School Reforms, Lenahan O'Connell, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

Accountability is a pivotal concern of applied social science. This article asserts that in many situations a full explanation of the sources of accountability requires the application of concepts from sociology and management science, in addition to those from the market-based approaches inspired by economics. The article describes the market-based approach to accountability exemplified by agency theory, applies it to school reform and derives several predictions about the likely success of market-based approaches to school reform, and documents the lack of evidence supporting the contention that programs for school choice will markedly improve teacher work effort and performance (as measured …

Charter School Locations Across The U.S. And Their Influence On Public School District Revenues, Peter A. Jones

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Since Minnesota passed the first charter school law in 1991, charter schools have become one of the most prominent school reforms in the U.S. While charter schools educate a small portion of public school enrollments, their existence has prompted various responses from traditional public school districts. For example, districts may change expenditure patterns or work to increase test scores in an effort to retain enrollments. In this sense, a charter school’s most significant impact on public school students may work indirectly through the traditional public school reactions they invoke.

This dissertation explores education finance implications for charter schools and their …

Gentrification And School Choice: Where Goes The Neighborhood?, Amy Childers Roberts

Educational Policy Studies Dissertations

This dissertation explores parent-gentrifiers’ lived experiences of the school-selection process, including the social networking and the influence of those social networks in their selection of schools. School choice and parent involvement are forms of social capital, and such social capital represents the results of social networking and parental agency. The unknown is how this scenario manifests itself in gentrifying parents’ school-selection process in Atlanta’s Kirkwood and Grant Park neighborhoods. Gentrifying children’s absence in urban public schools is of interest as residential areas integrate, while schools (re)segregate. The research paradigm is interpretivist as it investigates the qualitatively different ways in which …

Alternative School Administrators "At Risk": What Does It Mean For Children?, Christopher Dunbar Jr.

Trotter Review

Alternative public schools have evolved from their origins in school choice and the progressive education movement of the 1920's into a system of schools that have become the assigned "dumping ground" for a population of ill-prepared, behaviorally disruptive youth, a population that is also disproportionately composed of minority students. Research suggests these schools fall short of providing an optimal educational opportunity for their students. There are multiple factors that place alternative school administrators "at risk" of failing in their charge to educate. Using a case study from a Midwestern alternative school, the author focuses on policy and the role of …

The School Choice Issue: Remarks Made At The U.S. Department Of Education's Regional Strategy Meeting On Choice In Education, Phyllis Mcclure

Trotter Review

The term choice as it is used by the current administration with regard to education is a cosmetic, simplistic response to the failure of American schools. Choice has become a catch-all term for a whole variety of programs, plans, and theories. We should not let this meeting or the Department of Education delude us into believing that parental choice holds the promise for poor and minority children. The term is being used to describe not only what is happening in District 4 [public school district in New York City], but a plethora of ideas based on the free market. I …