Universal voucher programs for schools are rapidly expanding across the country. Under these programs, states give parents stipends to either homeschool their children or send them to private school. The growing popularity of vouchers raises a host of crucial questions and concerns. Key to informing the debate are questions of public finance and…

In June 2023, the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board approved the establishment of a charter school by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. This amounts to state funding of a religious school. Robert Kim discusses how this decision goes against Oklahoma's constitutional and legislative history, why allowing religious charters is not the…

Public education, at least as it has been known for the past several generations in the US, is under threat. Conservative state legislatures from Arizona to Florida have enacted sweeping voucher legislation, channeling taxpayer dollars to private schools. At the same time, a vicious culture war has engulfed the public education system in…

This article aims to measure and compare the effectiveness of voucher schools and public schools on mathematics and reading test score trajectories from Grade 4 to Grade 10 in Chile. We analysed a national database that includes measures taken in 2007, 2011, and 2013 from a same sample of over 140,000 students. Multilevel-growth models were used…

The article re-imagines the current developments of Swedish education into a possible future. Historically, education was organized and funded by the state; however, reforms towards privatization in the 1990s implemented school choice, private schools and a tax-financed voucher system with the option of turning profits on education. A new judicial…

Universal voucher policies allow any student, regardless of their family income level or history of attending public schools, to be eligible to use public funding to attend private, often religious, schools or home schooling. From 2021 to 2025, the number of statewide universal voucher programs has gone from zero to thirteen. These efforts have…

K-12 public education is a state responsibility and a federal interest, which means that state lawmakers have the primary responsibility for adopting and revising the laws governing public schools as well as scholarships, education savings accounts, and other private learning options. State officials also have significant authority over the laws…

Market-based policies, especially school vouchers, are expanding rapidly and shifting students out of traditional public schools. This article broadens, deepens, and updates prior critiques of the free market logic in five ways. First, although prior articles have pointed to some of the conditions necessary for efficient market functioning, I…

"Getting poor kids out of failing schools" sounds like an altruistic cause most Americans support. However, one policy mechanism utilized to achieve that result, parental choice vouchers, has a checkered past. This descriptive analysis explores the policy-bubble created when state legislators eschewed their constitutional responsibility…

As advocates for children and youth with exceptionalities, the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) believes that strong public education systems are necessary to ensure the promise of a free appropriate public education (FAPE) guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004. This position statement presents the…

The 2020 PDK Poll of the Public's Attitude Toward the Public Schools finds that more than half of adults consider public education highly important in their choice for president. And regardless of political party, most Americans agree that the administration in Washington should focus on attracting and retaining good teachers to the profession and…

To make the case for academia's engagement in knowledge mobilization and public scholarship in social media, we begin by providing a justification for the use of new technological modes for integrating scholarly endeavors. As an example, Sun Tzu's Art of War philosophy is applied to academic scholarship within the present school reform discourse…

As policy makers call for the dramatic expansion of school choice and voucher programs across the U.S., it becomes all the more important for educators and advocates to consider lessons learned in countries--such as the Netherlands, New Zealand, and England--that have already gone down this path. Efforts to promote choice and school…

This report examines current trends in state tuition tax credit (TTC) policies and how proposed federal TTC policy could harm school district finances across the country. The report is divided into five sections. Part I explains the concept of tuition tax credits, why they were created, how they operate, and why they prove to be more lucrative for…

Since Betsy DeVos became the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, she has continued to push for a federally funded private school voucher program. These programs currently exist in 29 states and provide state support--through direct payments or tax credits--for students to attend private schools. Some states have historically used…