School franchising (defined as the replication of a particular product or service across a wide geographic region) marks a radical departure from the traditional view of the community-based neighborhood school. This paper reports on a study of a growing niche of charter school private management contracts in Massachusetts. The focus is on the…

Attempting to reconcile theory with facts, this booklet explores equity and quality issues involved with parental choice in Massachusetts. Following an overview and summary, chapters 2 and 3 examine the theory and practice of intradistrict public school choice. Chapter 2 examines the controlled choice plans adopted by cities, arguing that racial…

This report examines the extent to which proposals to decentralize public education can be implemented by individuals, groups, or institutions prepared to operate charter schools. Charter schools must be able to balance autonomy for decisions relating to educational programs and accountability with academic standards and market forces.…

To help public schools experience free-market competition, Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander and President Bush propose parental choice among private, parochial, and public schools, supported by public financing for program design and tuition grants. Sidebars highlight church/state separation concerns and school choice experiments in…

Pioneer Institute recently organized a roundtable in which school officials discussed their experiences with inter-district public school choice. The participants exchanged views on the current state of the choice program in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts inter-district school choice program allows parents to enroll their children at schools in…

On January 31, 1996, Pioneer Institute Executive Director James A. Peyser delivered an address to the Boston Economic Club, in which he proposed radical reforms to the structure of public education. This publication contains an edited transcript of the speech. The speech argues that after 30 years of stagnation and decline, only fundamental…

The effectiveness of state enterprise zone programs was examined by using a hypothetical-firm model called the Tax and Incentives Model-Enterprise Zones (TAIM-ez) model to analyze the value of enterprise zone incentives to businesses across the United States and especially in the 13 states that had substantial enterprise zone programs by 1990. The…