The Common Core State Standards initiative (CCSS) seeks to "provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn" at various grade levels. For some education observers, CCSS will finally clarify for students, parents, and educators what students need to know and be able to do if they are to be prepared for…

This article presents the findings from the 2009 "Education Next" and Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) survey which asks if information changes minds about school reform. The authors fielded the survey in March of 2009, when newly elected president Barack Obama enjoyed public approval ratings above 60 percent.…

Despite their limitations, early evaluations of voucher programs provided program operators and evaluation teams with opportunities to learn the problems accompanying the study of school vouchers. Subsequent voucher programs in Dayton (Ohio), New York, and Washington, D.C., were designed to allow for the collection of high-quality information…

In "The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools" (Brookings, 2002), the authors and their colleagues reported that attending a private school had no discernible impact, positive or negative, on the test scores of non-African-American students participating in school voucher programs in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Dayton, Ohio.…

Presents data from evaluations of school voucher programs in four cities, analyzing the effects on academic performance of switching from public to private schools. Overall, vouchers have a moderately large, positive effect on the achievement of African American students, but no discernable effect on the performance of students of other…

Examined the effects of school vouchers on student test scores in three U.S. cities. Data from randomized field trials indicated that after 2 years, African Americans who switched from public to private schools improved academically relative to their public school peers in all three cities. These effects were not significant for other ethnic…

This report provides preliminary information on what needs to be learned about the systematic impact of voucher programs and the characteristics of students and families who make use of the Horizon voucher program in the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas. This initial report answers questions about the systemic impact of…

Americans both care about their schools and want them to improve. Though adults give the nation's public schools only mediocre grades, they are willing to invest more money in public education and they are reasonably confident that doing so will improve student learning. They are also open to a host of school reforms ranging from high-stakes…

In the late 1990s, three privately funded school voucher programs for students from low-income families were established in the Dayton, Ohio metropolitan area, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Additional programs were created in Dayton and Washington, D.C. and in 1999, the Children's Scholarship Fund, a nationwide school choice scholarship…

This paper examines the Cleveland Scholarship and Tuition Program (CSTP), a program initiated in 1996 that was the first in the U.S. to offer state-funded scholarships that can be redeemed at both secular and parochial schools. To gather information about the program, a telephone survey of 2,020 CSTP applicants, 1,006 of which did not enroll in…

Much of the controversy surrounding school vouchers, and privatization schemes generally, stems from concerns about social stratification. This paper identifies the form and magnitude of selection effects in a means-tested New York City voucher program. It compares students who applied for vouchers, with the eligible population of public-school…

This book presents the results of research on the effects of vouchers on African American students' achievement in Washington, DC, New York, New York, Dayton, Ohio, and San Antonio, Texas. At the conclusion of a 3-year evaluation, test scores of African American students in New York City's privately funded voucher programs were substantially…

This evaluation examines the impact of the first 6 to 7 months of the Washington Scholarship Fund (WSF) programs on students in grades 2-8 who had previously been attending public school, but had changed to private ones. More than 6,000 students had applied by lottery to a WSF school voucher program. The evaluation estimates the program's impact…

The voucher intervention sponsored by New York City's School Choice Scholarships Foundation (SCSF) has been a valuable source of information about such programs. It began in 1997, when K-4 public school students were invited to apply to SCSF for a voucher to help defray costs of private school tuition. Over 1,200 of 20,000 applicants were offered…

This paper responds to critics of an August 2000 paper that reported the effects of educational vouchers on student test scores in three cities. The report found that: (1) after 2 years, no students other than African Americans seemed to benefit from vouchers; and (2) African Americans in all three cities posted moderately large test score gains…