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School Choice

For American students sixteen years of age or younger, public school attendance has been compulsory since a Supreme Court ruling in 1925. Choice in American schools was traditionally the option of the wealthy, who could pay for private education. Private schools over the past century have enrolled about 12 percent of American students, especially within the past twenty years; choice of school has been significantly expanded in the form of vouchers, charter schools, home-schooling, and magnet schools. This entry looks at existing forms of school choice and reviews some of the comparative literature.

Types of School Choice

At present, based on information from the Center for Educational Reform, there are about 51,000,000 students involved in K-12 schooling; the vast majority of these students are enrolled in traditional public schools. Students not attending public schools include about 5,200,000 in private schools; 2,500,000 in Catholic schools; 800,000 in charter schools; and 1,100,000 being homeschooled. The percentage of students attending private schools has been stable for the past 100 years (12–15 percent); in contrast, other forms of choice have increased, especially in the past fifteen years.

For example, since the first legislation was approved to allow charter schools in Minnesota, the number of states allowing charter schools has risen to forty-five. In the 2004–2005 school year, about 450 new charter schools opened with an enrollment of roughly 76,000 students. Importantly, choice within the public school system has also increased in the form of more than 4,000 magnet schools. Magnet schools are public theme schools (e.g., math, science, and the performing arts) that allow students from diverse neighborhoods to attend.

The type of voucher programs and charter schools offered vary tremendously from state to state. Essentially, a voucher is a subsidy that pays some, or all, of a student's tuition to attend the private or Catholic school that a parent chooses. Eligibility for receiving vouchers varies widely, but typically low-income children in inner-city schools are the targeted recipients. Charter schools are public schools that have been approved by some form of state-level authorization. In charter schools, some regulations that other public schools face are waived (e.g., teacher certification requirements) to allow for more flexibility and experimentation. However, as Thomas Good and Jenifer Braden note, laws show tremendous variation.

Comparative Analysis

The effect of attending choice schools (voucher, charter, private, or home school), rather than traditional public schools, can be analyzed in a number of ways: Does a choice school attract better students or teachers? Do certain types of students do better in one type of school? Are some schools more efficient or economical than others? Here we limit the discussion to a comparison of the effects of instruction and student achievement.

Proponents of choice argue that the public school monopoly discourages competition or policies to encourage risk taking and experimentation. However, actual research on vouchers has been limited and hotly contested. Across extant research, there is no evidence to suggest that vouchers consistently have a positive impact on student programs or achievement. Some studies show gains, whereas others do not. In general, the research on school vouchers has been limited to small studies in a particular city; however, this research in aggregate indicates that the programs do not have the positive effects that their proponents argue. Importantly, there is an absence of data that examine how instruction varies in choice schools, and indeed, some limited evidence suggests that instruction in private and public schools is more similar than different, as Richard Rothstein and his colleagues have noted.

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