NATIONAL CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PRIVATIZATION IN EDUCATION

This article presents a case study of a U.S. charter high school that was created by an East African community seeking a learning environment for immigrant adolescents committed to an Islamic lifestyle. It describes how such schools are a reaction to concerns from Muslim immigrant parents and community leaders that youth are experiencing rapid assimilation at school and are replacing their ethnic and religious identity with an other-imposed racialized identity.

By Mathew Carr and Gary Ritter
School choice proponents argue that market competition to attract students to charter schools and other school choice options will improve the overall quality of public education by forcing traditional public schools to improve or lose students and their funding.

By Ji-Ha Kim
The market for private tutoring (also known as test preparation) has grown significantly in recent years, especially in developing countries, but scholarly inquiry has yet to thoroughly investigate the nature of this growth.

Studies of student achievement that compare charter schools with conventional public schools show a highly-mixed pattern. But, if differences in achievement are small and unpredictable, why do families choose charter schools?

A new paper by Fang Lai presents evidence on a changing education system in China, as well as the effect of school choice on student learning outcomes. In Beijing, education reform has replaced school assignments based on merit and geography with a system of limited school choice. Families are asked to rank schools in their assigned zone by preference, and students are selected for oversubscribed schools through lottery. Lai analyzes the effect of gaining admission to a "first-choice" school by comparing the achievement of lottery winners and losers.

Market-based education reforms are controversial with unclear outcomes regarding student achievement and service quality. Advocates for these reforms claim that overhauling entrenched public education bureaucracies is a necessary step toward providing students with better learning opportunities. However, critics worry that an increasing emphasis on entrepreneurship in education may place financial and political goals ahead of student needs. A new paper by Patrick McGuinn surveys the current policy landscape and describes how to build support for charter schools, alternative teacher certification, and supplemental education services.

Chad d'Entremont and Luis A. Huerta
This article discusses the limited use of education vouchers in an era of unprecedented growth in school choice. It is divided into two parts: first, a description of the policy, political, and legal barriers that may limit the expansion of large-scale voucher programs is presented. Discussion then shifts to the efforts of voucher advocates to build support among historically marginalized populations frustrated with the performance of public schools and open to limited forms of private school choice.

This paper examines two issues related to pre-school education funding. First, the authors provide a brief set of arguments for government funding of universal, pre-school education. Second, they explore the applicability of a voucher plan using a regulated market approach for the funding of universal, pre-school education.

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, it presents a model examining the school choice processes of disadvantaged households accessing the LFP sector in a study on Lucknow District, Uttar Pradesh . The model presents households in the study as engaging in ‘active choice ’. Active choice is seen as the deliberated action of households in making concerted choices about their children’s schooling through a complex process.

Over two percent of school children are home schooled and eleven percent sent to private school. I estimate models of school choice using household-level data from three rounds of the National Household Education Survey merged to secondary data sets. Families are inclined to avoid low quality public schools.

Despite substantial attention from policymakers and the media, education vouchers continue to play a limited role in the provision of education. Voucher proposals have failed to pass through most state legislatures, to be authorized through popular referenda, or to survive judicial scrutiny. A new paper by Luis Huerta and Chad dEntremont examines the potential for education voucher advocates to turn to tuition tax credit policies as a more legally defensible and politically feasible approach to privatization.

By Henry M. Levin and Heather Schwartz
Can the market work with the public sector to produce superior results? Previous research indicates that children benefit from pre-school education, especially low-income and minority children. However, some policymakers consider the cost of high-quality early childhood education programs prohibitive.

By Cathy Wylie
New Zealand Council of Educational Research
Research from countries with broad school choice initiatives has become particularly relevant to the U.S. with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the potential for all students in failing schools to gain access to new schooling options.