The purpose of this study was to examine enrollment management needs and potential processes in traditional public preschool through 12th grade school districts. This study allowed school districts to examine their own individual unique enrollment management needs and potential processes for moving forward in making equitable decisions for all…

From November 2 to December 10, 2021, EdChoice Kentucky administered a survey of Kentucky's private K-12 schools. The purpose of that assessment was six-fold: (1) forecast a count of currently available seats and capacities to enroll additional students, (2) measure the familiarity with and potential interest in various private school choice…

Effective strategic enrollment management (SEM) efforts require vast amounts of internal and external data to ensure that meaningful reporting and analysis systems can assist managers in decision making. A wide range of information is integral for leading effective and efficient student recruitment and retention programs. This article is designed…

School performance frameworks (SPFs) are action-oriented information tools that provide information on school performance and quality across a variety of measures. SPFs have evolved as a solution for local communities to make sense of an array of student, school, and system performance data, and to support transparent and equitable decisions. SPFs…

Across the country, many large school districts have seen flat or declining enrollments in recent years, including in places where there's been concurrent growth in charter schools. The result has been a growing perception that charter expansion is coming at the expense of the health of traditional school districts--a perception that, even if…

In this article, researchers Dick M. Carpenter II and Grant Clayton explore common enrollment systems (CESs)--how they work and what school leaders can learn from districts that have implemented CESs. Denver, New Orleans, and Newark (New Jersey) have rolled out this centralized enrollment process for all district-run and charter schools in their…

Public education in Chile has been steadily losing students as a result of the implementation, for the last 35 years, of a market model. In this paper we exemplify how a structural problem (public schools' declining enrollment) created by neoliberal educational policies is transformed into an individual problem to be managed by the public school…

Proponents of market-based education reform often argue that introducing charter schools and other school choice policies creates a competitive dynamic that will prompt low-performing districts to improve their practice. Rather than simply providing an alternative to neighborhood public schools for a handful of students, the theory says, school…

Bob Uecker, the Milwaukee Brewers' quipping radio broadcaster, makes his brief and lackluster career as a major league catcher the subject of much of his humor. About catching the knuckleball, Uecker famously said, "I always thought the knuckleball was the easiest pitch to catch." Of course, there is an even better way to catch a knuckleball, and…

What's the best way to turn around a persistently low-performing school? Is it better to simply replace the principal and teachers, or is it necessary to reopen under new charter management? Maybe policymakers are asking the wrong question, writes Halley Potter. What if, instead of replacing the adults at the school, we changed the mix of…

The nation's Roman Catholic schools have labored for decades under increasingly adverse economic and demographic conditions, which have undermined their finances and sapped their enrollment. Today, researchers and supporters say those schools face one of their most complex challenges yet: the continued growth of charter schools. Since they first…

A large empirical literature has shown that user fees significantly deter public service utilization in developing countries. While most of these results reflect partial equilibrium analysis, we find that the nationwide abolition of public school fees in Kenya in 2003 led to no increase in net public enrollment rates, but rather a dramatic shift…

State policy is crucial to the spread of digital-learning opportunities at the elementary and secondary level. A review of recent legislative action reveals policies that are constantly in flux and differ quite markedly from one state to another. Some have hoped for model digital-learning legislation that could handle all the various issues…

While the number of charter schools is growing rapidly, questions have been raised about whether charter schools are appropriately serving students with disabilities. GAO was asked: (1) How do enrollment levels of students with disabilities in charter schools and traditional public schools compare, and what is known about the factors that may…

Responding to concerns that charter schools do not provide equal access to students with disabilities, advocates in districts, states, and courts across the country have sought to improve such access. Adding to these concerns, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently released a report showing that charter schools, on average, serve a…