"Measuring Competitive Effects from School Voucher Programs: A Systematic Review" by Ann G. Egalite (p443-464, this issue) concludes that, "overwhelming [U.S.] evidence supports the development of market-based schooling policies as a means to increase student achievement in traditional public schools." Here, John Merrifield…

Legislators considering large scale school choice proposals want information on more than likely schooling outcomes. They look to their fiscal bureaus and economic studies to provide that information. The fiscal notes that must accompany all proposals with revenue or expenditure implications are especially important. Often, fiscal notes must be…

A special tabulation of individual student scores from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test allowed a ranking of Texas schools according to test score changes ("value added"). The rankings varied greatly by student subpopulation. That is, the vast majority of schools are much more effective with some kinds of students than others.…

There is widespread concern about differences in the quality of state-run and private schooling. The concerns are especially severe in the numerous developing countries where much of the population has left state-provided schooling for private schooling, including many private schools not recognized by the government. The fees charged by the…

Freedom of any kind has intrinsic value, and education freedom is controversial, in need of empirical assessment of possible and likely trade-offs between freedom from state control and social goals such as equity and cohesion. Without a reasonable empirical measure of education freedom we can only cite the controversies and choose sides. The…

Studies of existing best practices cannot determine whether the current "best" schooling practices could be even better, less costly, or more effective and/or improve at a faster rate, but we can discover a cost effective menu of schooling options and each item's minimum cost through market accountability experiments. This paper describes…

Merrifield (2009) provides a useful polemic about the sad state of data analysis too frequently encountered in the school choice literature. Available data come from limited policy experiments with only modest amounts of choice and competition. The effects of very modest changes in school choice on school performance are, as one might expect,…

Benefiting from new data provided by experimental economists, behavioral economics is now moving beyond empirical tests of standard behavioral assumptions to the problem of designing improved institutions that are tuned to fit real-world behavior. It is therefore worthwhile to consider the potential for new experiments to advance school choice…

In this article, the author answers Mark Holmes's comments on his article "Imagined Evidence and False Imperatives." Certainly, readers can see in Holmes's comment the prevailing disagreement about the importance of existing data sets to an assessment of the effects of competition and other aspects of genuine markets. Holmes acknowledges the…

Pressing questions about the merits of market accountability in K-12 education have spawned a large scholarly literature. Unfortunately, much of that literature is of limited relevance, and much of it is misleading. The studies most widely cited in the United States used intense scrutiny of a few small-scale, restriction-laden U.S. school choice…

There is much interest in the effects of a larger parental role in schooling issues. That role can exist through voice--direct parental involvement in schools and participation in the political process that dictates schooling policies--or through choice from a menu of schooling options. This article addresses the limited understanding and…

One of the key claims of choice advocates is that it will take diverse schooling options to engage all children in learning. In a school system truly open to new providers of instruction and diverse schooling options, private schools and public schools of choice can vie for customers by trying different subject themes and pedagogies. If a school's…

Pressing questions about the merits of full-fledged market accountability in K-12 education, and more limited choice programs, have spawned a large scholarly literature. This article assesses what we know from the most prominent studies and the importance of those findings to school system reform discussions. The studies most widely cited in the…

Charter laws have been the reform debate's path of least resistance. But the combination of regulatory barriers, open admissions, lack of consumer sovereignty, preferential funding of traditional public schools, and political control of prices means that charter laws may be irrelevant as reform catalysts, or worse. Even the strongest charter laws…