Using data from a 2-year qualitative study, the author examines how East African Muslim immigrant youth experience and become shaped by the environments of U.S. mainstream schools compared with a culturally specific charter high school. Results from this study reveal that East African Muslim immigrant youth are affected by religious and cultural…

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…

In 2002, Qatar began establishing publicly funded, privately operated "independent schools" in parallel with the existing, centralized Ministry of Education system. The reform that drove the establishment of the independent schools included accountability provisions such as (a) measuring school and student performance and (b) distributing school…

Few people realize the movement's breadth and the forms in which school choice expansion is manifest. Out of slightly more than 57 million K-12 schoolchildren, almost 29.4 million--nearly 52%--are enrolled in a K-12 school choice option. This article provides an overview of the scope of school choice today and summarizes the political, policy, and…

During the 33 years New York City schools were controlled primarily by community school boards, the city's mayors posited that greater mayoral influence was the cure for the ills afflicting the city's schools. This paper applies theories of policy change to the 30-year battle for control of New York's schools while highlighting the role of the…

Tim Keller's article insightfully explores the flawed legal reasoning behind and potentially pernicious consequences of the Arizona Supreme Court's 2009 "Cain vs. Horne" ruling. He carefully examines the two fundamental flaws in the court's interpretative methodology: a failure to engage in a straightforward textual analysis of Arizona's Blaine…

This study is an ethnographic case study of two schools as they implemented an enrichment program. The sample included students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and board and government personnel. Data was drawn from interviews and observations of participants, curriculum analysis, and communication between school, home, and the public.…

Charter schools are held up as examples of the benefits of a freer approach to hiring teachers. Most studies of charter school personnel policies, however, overlook important variation in personnel practice within the charter school sector. Examining how charter schools use recruitment timelines and teacher compensation to complete for teachers in…

Since articles on school choice naturally tend to concentrate on outcomes from various "initiatives," they tend to offer little by way of theoretical advance in the manner in which choice policy is understood or in the way school choice is actualized within families and how students are thought to benefit from it. Against a political backdrop in…

This commentary is in response to Tim Keller's article "The National Implications of 'Cain v. Horne.'" In his analysis, Keller asserts that the Arizona Supreme Court wrongfully struck down a voucher program for students with special needs by characterizing the voucher as aid to schools rather than aid to students. In this response to Keller, I…

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…

Teacher attrition and migration plague many American schools. The situation is even more dire in charter schools across the country. On average, teacher attrition is 15 to 40% higher in charter schools than in traditional schools. This study examined the relationships among teacher empowerment, school leadership, and intentions to stay in or leave…

We assess whether the organizational culture of traditional public schools shapes their response to competition from charter schools in Arizona, which has a high level of charter school competition. We focus on traditional public elementary schools from 1995 to 1998, when charter schools were introduced in this state. We explore this topic by…

This essay traces the roots of the equity approach to school choice to the work of Coons & Sugarman, which began as an outgrowth of their involvement with the landmark California school finance case, "Serrano v. Priest" (1971). Comparing the equity approach to the market model espoused by Milton Friedman, the author argues that the former is…

School improvement and reform efforts frequently involve the adoption of a new curriculum program. This article examines the factors that influence program selection when schools have freedom to choose as opposed to having programs mandated by district, state, or national education authorities. Survey and document analysis are used to examine the…