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Unlike vouchers and tax credit scholarships that do not allow parents to customize their children's education, Education savings accounts (ESAs) provide funding to pay for part-time classes at public and private schools, tutoring, curricula, services for special needs, and more. As navigating the opportunities that come with ESAs can be difficult, there is a growing movement to include "choice navigators" as an eligible expense in ESA programs, which can inform parents what educational opportunities are available and help tailor an education program for their children. This paper examines several key elements, including determining the types of navigation services that parents need in the changing education landscape; identifying best practices that states can adopt to simplify ESA navigation; tapping into the experiences of current ESA users and traditional homeschoolers; and deciding whether there are policies that can encourage an adequate supply of navigators without creating counterproductive rules.

Over the past two decades, researchers have spent countless hours studying the impacts of public charter schools--independently-run, tuition-free schools of choice that serve some 3.7 million U.S. students today. Just prior to the pandemic, studies from Ohio and nationally indicated that charters on average delivered superior academic outcomes compared to traditional districts. And the very finest charters in Ohio and around the nation were driving learning gains that gave disadvantaged students the edge needed to succeed in college and career. The pandemic scrambled most everything about K-12 education. But did it upend what we know about charter school performance? The present study examines the post-pandemic performance of Ohio's brick-and-mortar charter schools, which enrolled 81,000 students--mostly from urban communities--during the 2022-23 school year. The results reveal that, in terms of student achievement growth, Ohio's charter schools remain a better educational option for the average charter student.

May 17, 2024 marks the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled segregated schools were "inherently unequal." At the time, North Carolina was one of 17 states that enforced de jure segregation, that is, segregation by law. The state of North Carolina and the school districts within the state have played prominent roles in our nation's history of school desegregation. North Carolina's public school enrollment is increasingly multiracial, and the expansion of school choice means that a growing share of students attends charters and private schools, both of which tend to be more segregated than traditional public schools. On the cusp of this important anniversary, the authors assess where North Carolina schools are now in terms of school desegregation, as segregated schools are systematically linked to unequal educational opportunities and outcomes, while desegregated schools are associated with numerous short-term, long-term, academic, and nonacademic outcomes for individuals and society.

Do residential neighbors affect each others' schooling choices? We exploit oversubscription lotteries in Chile's centralized school admission system to identify the effect of close neighbors on application and enrollment decisions. A student is 5-7% more likely to rank a high school as their first preference and to attend that school if their closest neighbor attended it the prior year. These effects are stronger among boys and applicants with lower parents' education and prior academic achievement, measured by previous scores in national standardized tests. Lower-achieving applicants are more likely to follow neighbors when their closest neighbor's test scores are higher. A neighbor enrolling in a school with one s.d. higher school effectiveness, peer composition, or school climate induces increases of 0.02-0.04 s.d. in the applicant's attended school. Our findings suggest that targeted policies aimed at increasing information to disadvantaged families have the potential to alleviate these frictions and generate significant multiplier effects.

This report analyzes changing racial composition in a comparable subset of schools to enable policy-relevant comparisons between charter and magnet schools. It reports the levels of segregation and diversity in these two systems, which is important because of strong evidence that diverse schools produce educational gains and substantial lifelong benefits in terms of college, employment, and other key life goals. Primary data was acquired from the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Common Core of Data (CCD), and Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data. In the school districts where both forms of choice were tried, magnets have done better than charters at modestly integrating students. An obvious explanation for this is that a basic mission of magnets, especially initially, was to address racial isolation. Policymakers interested in gaining the benefits of integration through choice might look closely at magnet schools. The higher segregation in charter schools observed in this analysis, coupled with other studies with similar findings, suggests that reforming charter schools, if not advancing alternatives like magnet schools or something even more powerful, is needed to address segregation and its well-documented harms.

"Brown v. Board of Education" held that the educational systems of seventeen states that mandated segregated schools violated the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection. The decision helped set off the civil rights revolution. However, after so many years of backlash, schools of the South are dramatically less segregated than what existed before "Brown." "Brown" brought to a head the conflict between the professed belief in equal opportunity and the reality of clearly inferior schools for Black and Latino children. Many whites saw the desegregation changes that the courts and federal agencies ordered as a threat. From a civil rights perspective, the battle was for connecting young people of color to transformative educational opportunities. Opponents mobilized and they attacked the courts and the law. This report examines the changing patterns of segregation and diversity in U.S. public schools, updating earlier work with contemporary and historical data. At a time when U.S. social and political polarization are severe and race relations are dangerously strained, schools matter even more.

For more than twenty-five years, public charter schools have served Ohio families and communities by providing quality educational options beyond the local school district. But it's no secret that we've also had a long-standing debate over whether increasing school choice impacts students who remain in traditional districts. In important--and sometimes impassioned--discussions such as these, rigorous research is critical to ground conversations in facts and evidence. Our latest report offers an analysis of the rapid scale-up of Ohio charter schools during the late 1990s and early 2000s. It finds that charters slightly boosted the graduation and attendance rates of traditional district students, while having no significant impacts on their state exam scores. These results follow a body of research from various locales showing that expanding educational choice--whether via public charter schools or private schools--consistently yields neutral to slightly positive impacts on traditional districts.

Seismic shifts are shaking the landscape of K-12 education. Public school districts across the US have lost over a million students since 2020. Meanwhile, novel educational models--such as microschools and hybrid homeschooling--have more than doubled their enrollments. This paper explores what's driving families to seek these new learning environments by utilizing a theory and methodology called Jobs to Be Done. According to the theory underpinning Jobs to Be Done, people adopt new solutions--such as microschools--when struggling moments in their lives cause them to seek new ways to make progress in the face of those struggles. Through interviews with parents who recently moved their children to microschools, this research uncovered three Jobs to Be Done driving families' decisions: (1) Job 1: When I disagree with decisions at my child's school and I'm feeling unheard, help me find an alternative that will honor my perspective and values; (2) Job 2: When my child is unhappy, unsafe, or struggling at school, help me find an environment where they can regain their love for learning; and (3) Job 3: When my child's school is too focused on academic milestones and neglects other forms of learning, help me find a balanced educational experience for my child. As the educational landscape continues to evolve, the insights in this paper have the potential to empower new educational models with the understanding and tools to successfully navigate these changes. [This report was co-produced with VELA Founder Network and The Re-Wired Group.]

This brief explores the characteristics of the high schools that newcomer students choose to attend in the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Using data from the 2007-2008 through 2018-2019 school years, the study compares the high school enrollment patterns between newcomer students who attended Las Americas, a school dedicated to serving newcomer middle school students, and newcomer students from other HISD middle schools. Specifically, this brief examined school characteristics related to potential peer networks, English learner (EL) support and resources, disciplinary climate, and academic context. The analyses show that compared to non-Las Americas students, Las Americas students tended to enroll in high schools that provided more access to potential social networks with similar peers with respect to racial/ethnic diversity as well as foreign-born status. While Las Americas students were more likely to enroll in high schools where they might have greater access to EL support and resources, there were no differences in the disciplinary climate of the high schools attended between former Las Americas and non-Las Americas enrollees. Finally, Las Americas students were more likely than non-Las Americas students to choose high schools with a context potentially more conducive to academic achievement, as measured by end-of-course exam scores.

Unified enrollment (UE) systems were designed to improve efficiency, equity, and transparency in school choice processes, but research has focused on efficiency gains. This study examines whether moving from decentralized enrollment processes to UE mitigates or exacerbates racial segregation that often occurs in choice systems. Specifically, we examine a subset of charter schools in New Orleans that had enrolled disproportionately high numbers of white students prior to entering UE. We find that UE entry was associated with increased enrollment of nonwhite students in these schools without offsetting declines in white enrollment, facilitated by schools also increasing total enrollment after entering UE. We find no meaningful impacts of UE on school accountability measures, student or teacher mobility, or student discipline.

Many cities with school choice programs employ algorithms to make school placements. These algorithms use student priorities to determine which applicants get seats in oversubscribed schools. This study explores whether the New Orleans placement algorithm tends to favor students of certain races or socioeconomic classes. Specifically, we examine cases where families of Black and White or poor and non-poor children request the same elementary school as their top choice. We find that when Black and White applicants submit the same first-choice request for kindergarten, Black applicants are 9 percentage points less likely to receive it. Meanwhile, students in poverty are 6 percentage points less likely to receive a first-choice placement than other applicants for the same kindergarten program. However, these biases are not inevitable. In non-entry grades, where placement policies favor students whose schools are closing, Black and low-income applicants are more likely to obtain first-choice placements than their peers. We examine these priorities and simulate placements under alternate specifications of a deferred-acceptance algorithm to assess the potential of algorithm reform as a policymaking tool.

Many U.S. cities with school choice programs have adopted unified enrollment systems to manage their application and placement processes centrally. Typically, these systems use placement algorithms to assign students to schools. These algorithms make placements based on families' rank-ordered requests, seat availability in schools, and various priorities and lottery numbers that determine students' standing at each school. This study examines the placement algorithm--and broader school request, placement, and enrollment patterns--in New Orleans, which has a citywide system of charter schools. The authors explore whether the priority categories in the New Orleans placement algorithm tend to favor students of certain races or socioeconomic classes. Specifically, the authors examine cases where families of Black and white children, or lower-income and higher-income families, submit the same first-choice requests for kindergarten (a key entry grade for elementary school). In addition to examining whether certain groups of students are more likely than others to get school placements when they vie for the same seats, the authors run simulations to assess how placement patterns might differ with different policies.

Black Mothers Forum (BMF) was founded in 2016 to combat institutional racism, including disproportionate discipline, unrepresentative curricula, and racial bullying in Phoenix-area schools. When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted public education, the organization launched a network of microschools as outposts of this mission. These microschools were able to start quickly, make frequent course corrections, and sustain their efforts after the pandemic, thanks in part to Arizona's growing ecosystem of diverse education options. The initial pandemic-era effort to launch these microschools was documented in a case study published by the Center on Reinventing Public Education in 2022. This followup brief revisits the initial case study with an eye toward the pedagogical tensions and questions of sustainability that it brought to light. This brief is based on in-person classroom observations, a new round of interviews with BMF microschool leaders and educators, and an analysis of Arizona's education policy landscape.

"Believing in Public Education: A Demographic and State-level Analysis of Public Charter School and District Public School Enrollment Trends" is a new data analysis that examines enrollment trends during the last four school years (2019-2023). Over the last four school years (2019-20 to 2022-23), charter schools have gained more than 300,000 students, an increase of 9%. Meanwhile, district public schools have been unable to recover the 1.5 million students they lost during the pandemic, a 3.5% loss. The report examined data for White, Black, and Hispanic students in 26 of 42 states included in the analysis. All three groups are continuing to choose charter schools--and, in some cases, charter school enrollment growth is even outpacing expected numbers based on population growth trends.

The National Longitudinal School Database (NLSD) comprises three files, making up a near-census of all schools and districts in the United States from school years 1990-91 to 2019-20. The three files are the Public School File, Private School File, and District File. As evident by the titles, the first two files report data at the school-level for both public and private schools. The District File reports data at the public school district-level. We have set up these files so that they can be easily merged together in a variety of ways. This data set is unique in that it allows researchers to examine various aspects of school choice across traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, and private schools. These data have been used to examine changes in and effects of charter schools over time (Chen & Harris, 2022) as well as trends and predictors of school closures (Harris & Martinez-Pabon, 2023). This Codebook provides documentation on the sources and methods used to create the first release of the NLSD. It is organized into three sections, corresponding to the three NSLD files (Public, Private, District). Each of the three data files are in a "long" format, such that each row observation provides data for a given school (or school district) in a given school year (1990-1991 through 2019-2020). The accompanying Appendix spreadsheet describes the variables in each data set in more detail, including information on years available, number of observations, ranges, blanks and missing data, and data source. In future releases, we expect to augment the NLSD with additional data beyond the 2019-20 school year and from other sources relevant to its users. Potential developments include integrating data from the Office of Civil Rights, incorporating state-level charter and school take over policies, and exploring methodological refinements to the existing data.

Market-based policies, especially school vouchers, are expanding rapidly and shifting students out of traditional public schools. This essay broadens, deepens, and updates prior critiques of the free market logic in five ways. First, while prior articles have pointed to some of the conditions necessary for efficient market functioning, I provide a more comprehensive list. Second, with an up-to-date literature review, I show that all of these conditions fail to hold to an unusual extent in schooling relative to other markets. Third, because of these failures, I argue that the most potent critique of the free market approach to schooling comes from the intellectual home of markets--economics. Fourth, I show that the issues leading to inefficiency are the same ones leading to inequity. Fifth, I argue that the analysis points to specific roles for government, which go well beyond those included in new universal school voucher policies but are also narrower than the roles of government encompassed in traditional public education. For these reasons, the current policy direction is off-track and apparently inconsistent with the main criteria on which we evaluate education policy and even with the values that voucher advocates profess.

As current trends across the country indicate widespread declining student enrollment and attendance, EdChoice is interested in how states respond. It enlisted Hanover Research to summarize publicly available information for each of the 50 U.S. states about the role enrollment plays in state funding formulas, as well as any state-level policies that may reduce the impact of declining enrollment on education funding. This report presents an analysis of the policy scan and summarizes the key findings of the policy scan including trends in education funding formulas, funding, and enrollment protections across the United States. Key findings covered in this report include: the type of education funding formulas in each state; the metrics these formulas use to measure enrollment; as well as the declining enrollment; hold harmless, and temporary provisions for enrollment and funding protections identified in the initial policy scan. This policy scan analysis is part of a series of studies that will enable EdChoice to examine the broader landscape of the impact of declining enrollment on school funding and related policies across the United States. The full version of the policy scan can be found in "How States Protect Funding for K-12 Public Schools. State Profiles Index."

During the pandemic, a number of states instituted hold-harmless funding policies to protect school district financially from declining enrollments (Center for Public Education, 2021). In addition, some school choice policies have protected traditional public schools financially from declining enrollments. Together, these policies raise the question of whether competitive effects can exist in a policy environment of reduced financial pressure. Theoretically, despite the lack of financial pressure, schools could feel competitive pressure in other ways including a loss of reputation as students move to schools of choice (Epple, Romono, & Urquiola, 2017; Friedman, 1962; MacLeod & Urquiola, 2009; Urquiola, 2016). To provide insights on whether schools can improve without the threat of financial loss, we examine the Seoul school choice program which introduced autonomous private high schools (APHSs) in the context in which there is equalized funding across schools. More specifically, we examine whether competition induced by APHSs affects the achievement of students attending traditional public and private schools. The effect of APHSs is identified by exploiting plausible exogenous APHSs' entry through the random assignment of students. We find a small and positive effect of APHS penetration on the Korean and English achievement of private school students while finding no effects for traditional public schools, which have limited ability to respond.

Implementation of ESA programs will not be easy. The ESA model is novel and foreign to most state education agencies, which have little to no experience with helping families purchase a wide variety of educational goods and services using government funds. Even if agencies had the relevant experience, ESA programs are complex, involving millions of individual transactions as thousands of families make purchases from thousands of schools and other education providers. EdChoice developed this guide to help state agencies succeed as they roll out ESA programs. EdChoice's goal is to ensure that ESA programs achieve their purpose: to empower families to choose the best education for their children.

Americans are dissatisfied with the public school system--and student academic outcomes have fallen to historic lows. Increasingly, state lawmakers are responding by giving parents more options for their children's education. Some of these new opportunities, such as in Arkansas and Iowa, allow every child in the state to apply. Policymakers also took crucial steps to protect parents' rights as the primary caregivers for their children. Several states adopted new parent bills of rights or prohibited attempts by schools to withhold information from parents about their children. All these reforms, including efforts to eliminate the racial prejudice caused by colleges' so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, are crucial changes that will give students more opportunities to succeed in school and in life. This "Backgrounder" lists the new state policies and describes the features of these laws.

The growth of homeschooling from a somewhat fringe movement during the 1970s and 1980s to a more widespread and socially accepted approach in recent decades has provided a strong foundation of flexible learning models. When Florida's school choice expansion, House Bill 1, was introduced in January 2023, one of its goals was to allow more homeschoolers to participate in the education savings account (ESA) program. But many homeschoolers and homeschool advocacy groups balked at the proposal. Having worked hard to achieve independence, they were loath to be linked to government funding. Even if the program were optional, they feared that associated regulations would eventually extend to traditional homeschoolers. In the end, the bill passed with new language that satisfied traditional homeschoolers by creating a new option for parents to educate their children at home. As states continue to enact and expand education savings accounts, Colleen Hroncich argues that it is crucial that policymakers craft bills in a way that maximizes freedom and minimizes roadblocks.

In the past three years, more than 20 states have enacted new education choice policies or expanded existing ones. Several more states are considering adopting policies that would allow parents to choose the learning environments that align with their values and work best for their children. However, some critics have raised concerns that school choice policies might spur increases in private school tuition, thereby undermining efforts to expand education options. A review of the research literature by the Martin Center found that the research "suggests that federal student aid increases university tuition rates, perhaps by as much as 60 cents on the dollar." The effects of these subsidies are evident. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the national average cost of college tuition and fees has risen 239 percent since 1980. In order to determine the effects of school choice policies on private school tuition, the authors analyzed 10 years of tuition data from Private School Review. The data show that, overall, the adoption of private school choice policies does not elevate tuition rates. If anything, the estimated effect shows that enacting school choice results in private schools charging lower tuitions than they otherwise would, although that effect is not statistically significant.

Rural students in Arizona enjoy far more education choice options than rural students in any other state. Education has flourished in rural areas under Arizona's robust choice environment just as much as in the remainder of the state. The data could not be clearer: Rural students with expanded opportunities thrive, as do their teachers and communities. A one-size-fits-all education system in fact fits few students and teachers, whereas a pluralistic and diverse system of schools fits more students and teachers. When families have many options to choose from, district schools will have a strong incentive to improve. If Texas lawmakers empower their educators to create new schools, educators will rise to the challenge, both inside and outside the school system. Key takeaways from this paper include: (1) Arizona and Texas are border states with large and growing cities, as well as vast rural areas, but the outcomes of their K-12 education systems have been opposites; (2) While the Texas economy is racing full speed ahead, the state's K-12 education has stalled and is in decline, with some of the worst cases in rural areas; and (3) Texas lawmakers should use Arizona--which has the country's most robust education choice policies--as a model, very much including its rural areas.

This is the revised edition of the 2023 "Report on the Condition of Education," which is a congressionally mandated annual report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Using the most recent data available (at the time this report was written) from NCES and other sources, the report contains key indicators on the condition of education in the United States at all levels, from prekindergarten through postsecondary, as well as labor force outcomes and international comparisons. There are core indicators that are updated every year and spotlight indicators that provide in-depth analyses on topics of interest to education agencies, policymakers, researchers, and the public. At the broadest level, the Condition of Education Indicator System is organized into five sections: family characteristics; preprimary, elementary, and secondary education; postsecondary education; population characteristics and economic outcomes; and international comparisons. The Report on the "Condition of Education 2023" encompasses key findings from the Condition of Education Indicator System. The full contents of the Indicator System can be accessed online through the website or by downloading PDFs for the individual indicators. [For the first edition of the report, see ED628286.]

School desegregation and equitable access to educational opportunity takes alignment in the housing and education sectors. Racist housing policies and practices have systematically limited access to opportunity for generations of people of color, profoundly affecting their wealth, and perpetuating racial disparities in opportunity and well-being for children. Contemporary school enrollment patterns of students of different races reflect the legacy of state-sanctioned segregation and decades of exclusionary practices in housing and education. This report lays out a through line between housing policies and practices, inequitable school resources, and inequitable educational outcomes. It discusses racist policies that drive residential racial segregation and how limited residential opportunities have manifested for students through school segregation and education inequity. Next, it shares solutions from communities across the country to address segregation across both sectors, including housing mobility for students in segregated communities and schools, housing supports for students who want to stay in gentrifying neighborhoods, and inclusionary zoning policies that encourage affordable housing construction near higher-performing schools. Finally, it presents guidance and resources that practitioners can use to improve equity in their own communities. These include steps communities can take to assess current conditions, identify partners, establish shared outcomes, implement solutions, and influence policies in both sectors. [This report was written with Alexa Kort and James Carter.]

The COVID-19 crisis caused the educational system's sudden and drastic upheaval as parents were forced to decide where their children would attend school and how they would get there. These decisions were complicated by the uncertainty surrounding what type of online or hybrid schooling districts would offer, the health risks of different transportation options, and the vaccine timeline. Families had to weigh the quality of their children's education, the health risks, and the logistics of various schooling options, which could have long-term implications for educational equity and access. The report examines the enrollment trends and student mobility patterns during the 2020-21 school year in New York City and Detroit--two major urban districts with school choice programs. The findings challenge some common assumptions about the pandemic's impact on education and shed light on its long-term implications for access and equity in schooling. [This policy brief was written in collaboration with the Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research (Detroit PEER). For the technical report, see ED629591.]

The COVID-19 crisis caused the educational system's sudden and drastic upheaval as parents were forced to decide where their children would attend school and how they would get there. These decisions were complicated by the uncertainty surrounding what type of online or hybrid schooling districts would offer, the health risks of different transportation options, and the vaccine timeline. Families had to weigh the quality of their children's education, the health risks, and the logistics of various schooling options, which could have long-term implications for educational equity and access. The report examines the enrollment trends and student mobility patterns during the 2020-21 school year in New York City and Detroit--two major urban districts with school choice programs. The findings challenge some common assumptions about the pandemic's impact on education and shed light on its long-term implications for access and equity in schooling. [For the policy brief, see ED629590.]