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This paper examines thirty major American cities to determine how "choice-friendly" they are today. Selected for their size and geographic diversity, the cities reveal both the best and worst conditions for school choice to take root and grow. "School choice" is defined broadly to incorporate a wide range of public and private options, including charter, magnet, and private schools, as well as mechanisms for accessing these options, including open enrollment, vouchers, and tax credit scholarships. Data on these options were collected from public databases and other sources, including district and state websites, newspaper articles, and education insiders in each city. The authors used these data to construct nearly fifty indicators of choice friendliness, then assessed the relative merits and drawbacks of each city's choice atmosphere relative to three areas: (1) "Political Support": measures the views of various individuals and groups as they pertain to school choice; (2) "Policy Environment": addresses topics such as the strength of state charter laws; funding and facilities access; non-profit, business, and philanthropic support; consumer supports, including report cards and transportation; and quality control mechanisms, such as policies for closing schools; and (3) "Quantity and Quality": addresses the types of school choice options that are available; the mechanisms for accessing those options, such as voucher and open enrollment programs; the portion of market share occupied by charters and other specialized schools; and the quality of the choice sector. Based on how they measured up, cities were awarded scores and ranks, overall and for each of these three areas. Notable patterns across the cities are identified that in turn informed the authors' recommendations for cities seeking to become more choice-friendly. City profiles by rank, patterns, and recommendations are detailed in this report. [Foreword by Amber M. Northern and Michael J. Petrilli. Contributors to the executive summary and sections one - six include: Julie Casper, Eric Chan, Solana Chehtman, Jane Griesinger, David Houston, and Christopher Lim. Section seven, "City Profiles by Rank," was written by David Griffith.]

The reason teacher retirement benefits have been much in the news in recent years, and a topic of close attention by lawmakers and budget-watchers, is not because their existence is in dispute but because their financial underpinnings are often shaky and sometimes truly precarious. If a state or district doesn't set aside enough money now to cover what it will owe beneficiaries in the future, it creates a gap between assets and liabilities. Recent estimates put the total unfunded liability of U.S. teacher pensions anywhere from $390 billion to an almost unimaginable trillion dollars--about twice the total annual budget of all American public education. Many factors are to blame for pension costs, including financial mismanagement, shortsighted decision making, artificially rosy investment projections, and declining asset values due to market downturns. Skyrocketing costs and more-generous benefits, along with relatively meager contributions from employees, have also placed a monumental financial burden on many retiree health care systems. States are now scrambling to address this burden by rethinking the ways they will structure and fund their retirement systems going forward. But in many places the fiscal challenge exceeds the capacity--or political will--of state leaders to make substantive changes. In the meantime, much of the cost is passed on to school districts and to local taxpayers. This summary report analyzes and projects how big an impact the pension and retiree health care obligations will have on the budgets of three school districts: Milwaukee Public Schools, Cleveland Metropolitan School District, and the School District of Philadelphia. [Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli. For the technical reports: "Milwaukee: Saved by Act 10…For Now," see ED598727; "Ohio Pension Reform in Cleveland: New Teachers Beware," see ED598728; and "Paying the Pension Price in Philadelphia," see ED598729.]