Scholars of political economy have raised the question of whether recent populist movements around the world signal the decline of neoliberal hegemony. What would such a decline mean for education policy, an arena that has been dominated by a neoliberal common sense for several decades? This study investigates the policy discourse of former U.S.…

For-profit charter schools represent a controversial new market-based education reform (Garcia, Barber, & Molnar, 2009; Conn, 2002). This essay explores how schools operated by for-profit corporations differ from those operated by non-profit organizations. Specifically, do for-profit charter schools locate in demographically distinct areas and…

One of the underlying premises of the charter school movement is that quality drives consumer choice. As educational consumers, parents are viewed as rational actors who, if given the choice, will select better performing school. In examining the choice processes of charter school parents, however, this study calls into question the extent to…

Market models of education reform predict that the growth of charter schools will infuse competition into the public school sector, forcing traditional public schools to improve the practices they engage in to educate students. Some scholars have criticized these models, arguing that competition from charter schools is unlikely to produce…

Online education has grown in popularity as a choice option over the past decade. A variety of studies exist on methodologies for content delivery and on the impacts of online education for specific communities. However, few works have considered the utility of online educational choices in comparison to physical schools. Using an expected utility…

Much of the literature related to the skimming or cropping of students by charter schools has ignored special education students. This article examines the relationship between the severity of student disabilities and their likelihood of having attended an Arizona charter school in the 2002-2003 school year. After adjusting for student traits,…

U.S. students now have four choices of schooling: public schooling, private-religious schooling, private-independent schooling, and home-schooling. Of these, home-schooling is the most novel: since legalization across the states in the last few decades, it has grown in importance and legitimacy as an alternative choice. Thus, it is now possible to…