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While school choice may be one of the most polarizing issues in education today, a new volume of research papers makes the case that innovations aimed at giving families more say in where their children go to school can be whatever their architects make of them. Programs such as magnet schools, charters, tuition tax credits, or open-enrollment options can either lead to schools that are more integrated by race and socioeconomic status or they can exacerbate segregation. They can promote innovative approaches to schooling or stifle them. They can spur learning gains for students or make no difference in achievement. It's all in how they are designed, the authors argue. Posted online March 20, "School Choice: Evidence and Recommendations", is a joint project of the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University in Tempe and the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The volume, which cost just under $100,000 to produce, is expected to run into some criticism from school choice advocates, though, because its funding came from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice, a Michigan think tank that gets financial support from the National Education Association, a staunch opponent of private-school choice.

This article presents the details of a conference discussing issues on NCLB implementation. The conference was based on a set of papers that included reviews of NCLB implementation in California, Colorado, Michigan, and New Jersey, as well as in three rural Kentucky districts and 36 big-city districts nationwide. Those analyses found that states and districts appear more inclined to offer technical assistance, professional development, and additional planning to troubled schools than to impose tougher sanctions. Participants in the meeting ascribed that pattern--which many of them see as a problem--partly to weak enforcement by the U.S. Department of Education. An equally large factor, many said, are shortcomings of the nearly 5-year-old federal law itself. Conference participants suggested a number of options to strengthen the law's accountability provisions. They include giving the job of informing parents about their options to entities other than school districts, not allowing districts to use leftover money from choice and tutoring for anything else, and giving districts clearer authority to override local collective bargaining agreements in order to restructure schools.