This article introduces the research initiated by Cardus on private religious Protestant and Catholic schools in North America and provides an overview of the succeeding articles presented in this special section of the "Journal of School Choice". Through mixed method study by multiple research teams the inquiry was designed to seek to better…

Designed as an exploratory study, this article represents an initial explication of the world of the Christian school head, an underresearched area of school leadership. Primarily drawing upon a small purposive sample of respondents in the field, the researchers used qualitative interviewing to develop a narrative describing the complexities of…

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.…

School sector differences have been the subject of much debate in the literature, but there is limited data that allows careful consideration of differences within the religious school sector. The extensive Catholic school effects literature focuses on issues of school climate, especially an emphasis on persons-in-community, or communal…

This article assesses to what extent and how 18 Protestant and Catholic religiously based high schools in Alberta, British Columbia, and Washington state prepare students for cultural awareness and engagement. All schools claimed to educate students to make constructive and significant differences in culture and society. While this was evident in…

This investigation compared the influence of public and Christian high schools on the spiritual formation and academic achievement of college students. Recent high school graduates who attend a private, liberal arts university in the southeastern United States responded to an online survey and interview questions related to the influence of one's…

Researchers assessed through quantitative and qualitative methods the relationships among high school students of different racial/ethnic groups in two high-performing urban high schools, one Evangelical and the other Catholic, and explored with students and staff the effect of the distinctive mission and religious worldview of each school on…

This longitudinal case study examines 10 years' worth of annual monitoring reports for two rural Native American Charter Schools. Using data from multiple sources including interviews, site visits, and document analyses, the authors used provisional coding and constant comparison analysis to categorize the accolades and recommendations embedded in…

Arizona's interdistrict open enrollment and charter schools laws allow families to send their children to the public schools of their choice. We assessed how public school choice affected elementary school enrollments in 27 metropolitan Phoenix school districts. Student mobility rates varied widely between districts and by location. The higher…

This article offers a rejoinder to William H. Jeynes' response to the six related articles and studies of private religious Protestant and Catholic schooling in North America featured in the March 2012 issue of the "Journal of School Choice". While the authors express appreciation for the credit he grants these studies and especially for the…

In this article, the author addresses many of the key points in each of the special section articles to which he responded. He observes that they are all very important pieces of research in that they clearly add important information to the existing body of research. The author notes that the articles provide insight on school climate in…

Using a nationally representative sample of eleventh grade students in South Korea, we investigated how the residentially based school assignment policy called the High School Equalization Policy (HSEP) shaped the separation of low and high socioeconomic status (SES) students between schools. We found that there was a smaller between-school…

Many countries associated with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development are seeking to raise standards and strengthen education systems by promoting school choice, illustrated by charter schools in the United States and the Free Schools in England. Australia's education system provides a relevant and useful case study of the…

This article provides examples of how serious misconceptions can result when only "all student" scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are used for simplistic state-to-state comparisons. Suggestions for better treatment are presented. The article also compares Kentucky's eighth grade EXPLORE testing to NAEP results for…

This article addresses the question of whether youth drinking leads to lower grades for public and private school students. Instrumental variables (IV) regressions are used to investigate differences in the relationship between drinking and grades based on whether students attend a public or private school. The regressions reveal that drinking…