Using a propensity score matching method, and regression modeling based on the 2002 Education Longitudinal Study, this study found a significant Catholic school, mathematics achievement effect among those 12th graders who were least likely to attend Catholic school. This result is evident within districts after we used the School District…

This article explores differential hiring and retention practices across schools of choice using data gathered as part of a comprehensive evaluation of a large-scale school voucher program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A variety of interview, survey, and observation instruments are used to describe the challenges and strategies that 13 schools report…

This article examines the high school search activities, choices, and final assignments of academically similar, but ethnically and socioeconomically different, eighth-grade students attending one New York City middle school. Despite being comparable candidates for admission to academically competitive high schools, the middle-class children of…

This article presents some unexpected findings from a study of the upper secondary school voucher system in Sweden. This publicly funded but relatively unregulated quasi-market offers a large number of alternatives to teenagers choosing an education. The choice situation is relatively complex and the stakes are high, but the youths themselves find…

It is possible that private schools in Australia may soon become the major providers of education at the senior secondary level. In this paper I describe the context for public and private schooling and report trends that point to the likelihood of such an outcome. The complex arrangements for public and private funding make Australia a rare…

This paper considers whether high schools in competitive environments use grade inflation to attract and retain families, perhaps in addition to more constructive responses. Two measures of grade inflation are used: the cutoffs used by each school to assign a letter grade to a percent score and high school grade point average after controlling for…

Some parents choose to send their children to military-style boarding schools for a variety of reasons. Abundant scholarly literature addresses traditional boarding schools. Far less is available addressing the choice of military boarding schools as an educational option. This qualitative study investigates why parents send their sons to military…

Many educational researchers have identified issues on classifying schools and some have made use of ad-hoc classification systems in their analyses; however, these solutions are generally one-dimensional, which prohibits them from capturing the full breadth of variation among schools. To understand the amount of variation that exist in schools…

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…

The paper approaches the issue of school choice in an indirect manner by investigating the effectiveness of public, private government-dependent and private independent schools in 19 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries selected from the PISA 2000 survey for this purpose. In a multilevel approach we estimate these…

In this paper I develop indices capturing business/market and nonprofit/mission characteristics of charter schools that can be used to explain many of their observed operational and political choices. This improves on earlier research using only a binary variable classifying charter schools as market or mission rather than letting them take on…

School choice is one of the most frequent recommendations for education reform in the United States today. Unfortunately, the debates are hindered by the lack of a common taxonomy or framework for discussing and evaluating the wide variety of school choice programs available in the United States. Furthermore, there is little information on the…

School empowerment and weighted student formula programs continue to grow across the United States. This article explores the key components of school empowerment programs and describes several existing programs from Baltimore to San Francisco. The article examines some of the anecdotal outcomes for these types of public school choice programs.…

This article discusses how alternative schools, depending on local and state policies, do and do not operate as schools of choice. A case scenario describes a difficult situation for an at-risk young adult. Additionally, the referral process under which many alternative schools function is described. (Contains 8 notes.)