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School desegregation and equitable access to educational opportunity takes alignment in the housing and education sectors. Racist housing policies and practices have systematically limited access to opportunity for generations of people of color, profoundly affecting their wealth, and perpetuating racial disparities in opportunity and well-being for children. Contemporary school enrollment patterns of students of different races reflect the legacy of state-sanctioned segregation and decades of exclusionary practices in housing and education. This report lays out a through line between housing policies and practices, inequitable school resources, and inequitable educational outcomes. It discusses racist policies that drive residential racial segregation and how limited residential opportunities have manifested for students through school segregation and education inequity. Next, it shares solutions from communities across the country to address segregation across both sectors, including housing mobility for students in segregated communities and schools, housing supports for students who want to stay in gentrifying neighborhoods, and inclusionary zoning policies that encourage affordable housing construction near higher-performing schools. Finally, it presents guidance and resources that practitioners can use to improve equity in their own communities. These include steps communities can take to assess current conditions, identify partners, establish shared outcomes, implement solutions, and influence policies in both sectors. [This report was written with Alexa Kort and James Carter.]

The COVID-19 crisis caused the educational system's sudden and drastic upheaval as parents were forced to decide where their children would attend school and how they would get there. These decisions were complicated by the uncertainty surrounding what type of online or hybrid schooling districts would offer, the health risks of different transportation options, and the vaccine timeline. Families had to weigh the quality of their children's education, the health risks, and the logistics of various schooling options, which could have long-term implications for educational equity and access. The report examines the enrollment trends and student mobility patterns during the 2020-21 school year in New York City and Detroit--two major urban districts with school choice programs. The findings challenge some common assumptions about the pandemic's impact on education and shed light on its long-term implications for access and equity in schooling. [This policy brief was written in collaboration with the Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research (Detroit PEER). For the technical report, see ED629591.]

The COVID-19 crisis caused the educational system's sudden and drastic upheaval as parents were forced to decide where their children would attend school and how they would get there. These decisions were complicated by the uncertainty surrounding what type of online or hybrid schooling districts would offer, the health risks of different transportation options, and the vaccine timeline. Families had to weigh the quality of their children's education, the health risks, and the logistics of various schooling options, which could have long-term implications for educational equity and access. The report examines the enrollment trends and student mobility patterns during the 2020-21 school year in New York City and Detroit--two major urban districts with school choice programs. The findings challenge some common assumptions about the pandemic's impact on education and shed light on its long-term implications for access and equity in schooling. [For the policy brief, see ED629590.]

Nearly 70 years after Milton Friedman first proposed K-12 education vouchers, students in Arizona, Iowa, Utah, West Virginia, and other states can customize their education using education savings accounts (ESAs). ESAs allow parents to spend public education funding on expenses such as private school tuition, tutoring, and homeschooling curricula. However the vast majority of students nationwide (84 percent) still attend traditional public schools--and will for the foreseeable future. Conservatives would be wise to support policies that give families choice within the public education system. The authors argue that cross-district open enrollment does precisely that, and it has strong bipartisan support. One state where families are reaping the benefits of open enrollment is Wisconsin. This article describes the state's experience with open enrollment over the past 25 years.

School assignment in Boston and New York City came to national attention in the 1970s as courts across the country tried to integrate schools. Today, district-wide choice allows Boston and New York students to enroll far from home. Although 1970s desegregation efforts likely benefited minority students, urban school transportation is increasingly costly and may not generate the gains in learning and educational attainment seen decades ago. We estimate contemporary causal effects of non-neighborhood school attendance and school travel on racial integration, achievement, and college enrollment using an identification strategy that exploits partly-random assignment generated by the Boston and New York school matching algorithms. Instrumental variables estimates suggest distance and travel boost integration for those who choose to travel but have little or no effect on test scores. Travel reduces post-secondary attainment and on-time high school graduation in New York. IV estimates show no human capital gains from travel even for students who indicate a strong preference for non-neighborhood schools. These findings are explained in part by the fact that the schools travelers travel to differ little in value-added terms from schools nearby. Negative effects on college enrollment in New York appear to arise from travel itself rather than diminished college value-added. [Additional funding from the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative.]

Differences in school choice by race contribute to school segregation and unequal access to effective schools. Conditional on test score and district of residence, Black and Hispanic families consistently choose schools with fewer white and Asian students, lower average achievement, and lower value-added. This paper combines unique survey data and administrative data from New York City to identify the determinants of racial disparities in school choice and shows that attending a more diverse middle school can mitigate racial choice gaps. A post-application survey of guardians of high school applicants reveals that information gaps and homophily in school preferences explain cross-race differences in choice. In turn, instrumental variable estimates show that middle school students exposed to more diverse peers apply to and enroll in high schools that are also more diverse. These effects are consistent across racial groups, particularly benefiting Black and Hispanic students who enroll in higher value-added high schools. Notably, changes in application patterns due to exposure to diverse middle school peers appear driven by changes in the set of known school options and an increased preference for peer diversity.

In urban areas like New York City, school choice systems intend to break the connection between residential segregation and schooling by allowing students to attend schools outside their neighborhoods. If successful, school choice could benefit historically underserved students. However, recent research suggests that achievement gaps and segregation persist in certain school choice districts. This study measures family preferences using (1) the characteristics of families' chosen schools and (2) an experiment that assesses how much families value three school characteristics. In the survey, families ranked and rated their likelihood of applying to sets of hypothetical schools. These schools varied only by safety, academic performance, and racial composition. By randomly varying these limited factors, the experiment can evaluate how much families value each of them. persist in certain school choice districts. Policymakers need to understand what barriers exist in school choice systems that prevent students from receiving their intended benefits and which policy responses can break down those barriers. This study shows that middle school diversity reduces information gaps in high school, suggesting that early policy interventions may lead to long-lasting improvements.

As more states adopt universal education savings account (ESA) programs, analysts have declared that the "final frontier" of school choice has been reached. Another choice that parents might want to make and policymakers should support as an intermediate option between private school and homeschooling is partnering with their local schools to establish parent-run microschools. This paper proposes that states can foster these partnerships by incentivizing school districts to allow small groups of parents to teach students at home with public financial assistance but total curricular freedom. This proposal gives parents maximum power to choose the curriculum without severing ties with local schools. With microschooling, parents with the power to choose curricula can positively change public education's very nature, unlike with ESA or voucher proposals that require the student to leave the system.

Pursuing new, commonsense approaches to education reform and work-family policies, from childcare and early education through higher education and workforce flexibility, will foster the conditions for family flourishing and increase birth rates for married couples. Affordable childcare from a variety of providers, including at-home options, access to high-quality K-12 education that reflects a family's values, a higher education landscape that provides numerous routes to upward mobility, and flexible work arrangements will give couples the confidence that they can have the number of children they desire. Public policy should support families as they form and grow, and can do so through reducing government regulatory overreach, directly funding students instead of institutions, and by removing barriers to a flexible workforce. Ultimately, these reforms will support couples as they raise their children to become productive members of a free society.

The Prospective Students Survey is one of the Graduate Management Admission Council's (GMAC) keystone research programs. The global graduate management education (GME) community has relied on data from this survey to gain insights about candidates' decision-making processes when considering and applying to graduate business schools since 2009. This year, the rich information gleaned from the Prospective Students Survey is being released in a nine-part series for easier consumption and improved user experience. The findings detailed in this overview report are based on responses from a total of 2,710 prospective students surveyed between January and December 2022 who represent those interested in various MBA and business master's program categories, including full-time MBA, professional MBA, executive MBA, master's in management and international management, and other specialized business master's programs. Responses used for analysis included candidates who are at different stages of the GME journey, including those who are actively applying to business schools or currently doing research about graduate business degrees. Descriptive analyses were conducted on survey responses to examine prospective students' program of study preferences, application plans, and preferred study destination. This overview report contains the following sections: (1) Graduate Management Education Decisions; (2) Program Choice; (3) School Selection Criteria; (4) Study Destination Considerations; and (5) Methodology. [Contributors of the report include: Quan Yuan, Alexandria Williams, and Kun Yuan.]

Approximately 20 percent of the public school students in the City of Los Angeles attend a charter school. Los Angeles is home to the second-largest school district in the nation. The School Choice Demonstration Project research team has documented disparities between traditional public school (TPS) and charter school funding in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) since the 2002-03 school year. Throughout these reports, TPS in LAUSD have consistently received more funding per pupil than charter schools in LAUSD--anywhere from 22 to 40 percent more. In 2013, the California Legislature changed the way public schools had been funded for the last 40 years by establishing the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), a funding mechanism intended to increase funding equity. In this report, the authors investigate the status of the TPS-charter school funding gap a year after the full implementation of the LCFF. The authors use official financial documents from the California Department of Education and LAUSD to account for every dollar TPS and charter schools received in the 2019-20 school year, including in-kind services. [Additional funding for this report was provided by City Fund.]

School ratings are a ubiquitous feature of the U.S. educational system. Alongside state-mandated measures of school performance, non-state organizations such as GreatSchools.org and Niche have created consumer-oriented systems of school ratings that draw on publicly available information about schools. Claiming the purpose of their rating systems is to help families navigate increasingly complex school choice options, these organizations present their ratings as authoritative sources of information. In the growing evidence base about consumer-oriented systems, there is consistent research showing that the measures that comprise school ratings are associated with schools' demographic characteristics, such as students' race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. This brief examines these consumer-oriented rating systems and their implications for educational equity, and provides recommendations to minimize potential harms.

Subtitle VII-B of the McKinney-Vento Act, reauthorized in 2015 by Title IX, Part A of the "Every Student Succeeds Act" guarantees a child or youth identified as homeless the right to attend either the school of origin or the local attendance area school in the area in which they are currently residing. This brief explains the provisions in the law related to school selection, offers strategies for linking students experiencing homelessness to services in their school of origin, provides practical suggestions for determining the school that is in the best interest of a student experiencing homelessness to attend, and provides practical suggestions for discussing school selection choices with youth experiencing homelessness, their parents, and their guardians, within the framework of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

Crises have a way of shaking up the status quo and creating space for new thinking. When shocked out of their familiarity, people start to ask questions as to why things are the way that they are and brainstorm ways to make them better. Enter entrepreneurs. They are the people who take those ideas that are lying around and attempt to create solutions to the problems blasted open by crises. The pandemic was a crisis for American education. From 2019 to 2022 the average fourth grade math score dropped 5 scale score points, falling to the lowest level since 2005. In eighth grade, the average math score dropped 8 points, the lowest they have been since 2003. Entrepreneurs responded to the pandemic with gusto. The Prenda microschool network started in 2013 but tripled in size during the pandemic. Parents looking for smaller, more responsive education environments met a platform that was ready for them. The Art of Problem Solving, a content provider known originally for its high-level math courses, leaned into the pandemic, flooding their website with resources for parents and building out the functionality of their products. Now emerging from the pandemic, it is an opportune time to take stock of exactly where the world of educational entrepreneurship stands. What are the headwinds and what are the tailwinds? Where is entrepreneurship succeeding and where it is struggling? To answer these questions, EdChoice partnered with Hanover Research to survey 59 educational entrepreneurs working today to find out about their experiences. This paper shares the results of that survey.

In order to realize all the benefits of parental-choice programs, advocates, policymakers, and participating schools have to pay more attention to implementation challenges, both when designing parental-choice policies and after new programs are enacted. This report discusses both categories of implementation challenges. The first category--challenges that result from policy design--includes features of many programs that make them difficult to implement, such as limits on the tax benefits available in scholarship tax-credit programs, low scholarship amounts, and eligibility restrictions. The second category--challenges that occur after programs are enacted--result from advocates' and participating schools' failure to take steps that would increase the likelihood of programmatic success, such as prioritizing academic improvement among program participants, better informing parents about the choices available to them, and encouraging the development of more and better schools and school networks. This report focuses on "private-school-choice" programs--that is, programs that enable students to use public resources for private-school tuition. To the extent that education savings account (ESA) funds are used to enable participants to attend private schools, as they will be in many, if not most, cases, the report addresses implementation issues affecting ESAs. While the policy landscape is shifting rapidly, and more states undoubtedly will enact universal ESAs in the months and years to come--the vast majority of parental-choice programs are, and will continue to be, limited in scope and eligibility, necessitating continued attention to the issues addressed in this report critical to their success.

Open enrollment is a form of school choice that gives families the opportunity to choose an educational setting or school within the public school system that is best for their children. In U.S. public school districts, students typically must attend the school that is in their neighborhood and often do not have a choice of attending a different school if there is not an open enrollment option. Open enrollment options, however, vary by state and region. Open enrollment can be either intra-district or inter-district. "Intra-district open enrollment" allows students to transfer to another school within their resident district. "Inter-district open enrollment" allows students to transfer to another public school district, even if they live outside the choice district's attendance boundaries. This paper will describe trends in elementary and secondary enrollment and financing and how those trends interact with open enrollment in the US. Then it describes the open enrollment landscape at both the state and district level. It then reviews the available literature on the participation and impact these policies have on students and school systems, followed by detailed case studies of inter-district choice programs in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and Ohio to understand and gain insight on the processes and perceptions of administrators in the state. Finally, policy implications for improving access to and the impact of opening district boundaries will be summarized.

In New York State, private and religious schools are required to offer a curriculum "substantially equivalent" to what is available in local public schools. Substantial equivalency--which has been law for nearly 130 years--allows parents to direct the education of their children by enrolling them in the school of their choice, while also ensuring that schools meet certain standards. However in September 2022, the New York State Board of Regents amended the regulations governing the law's enforcement. The amendments follow a multiyear effort on the part of a small group of activists who voiced concerns over a particular group of religious schools in New York City and a few other counties in the state. These schools serve the "Haredi" Jewish community, also described as ultraorthodox. There are critical public-policy and legal issues within the debate over Haredi schools and the state's substantial-equivalence requirement, particularly how to weigh the right to religious freedom enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This issue brief will explore those issues and attempt to place them in the context of the communities that overwhelmingly choose these schools for their children.

An ongoing struggle for affordable housing in Southern California has led many predominately White, middle, and upper middle- class families to seek home ownership in divested urban communities. This phenomenon, known as gentrification, can benefit a community by increasing property values, but often comes at a cost to longstanding, Black and Brown residents of the neighborhood. Prior research has identified areas of harm including residential displacement, declining enrollment, and segregation of neighborhood schools. This qualitative case study addressed two questions: the impact of gentrification on the Black and Brown students attending the neighborhood school; and the strategies needed to balance competing interests between gentrifiers and longstanding families. The study's findings made it abundantly clear that inequitable district and site- based policies combined with White families' self- serving interests adversely affect the minority student experience. Operating as a counterweight to the harm, interview and observation data suggested that mindful school leadership and uniting parent interests played an integral role in establishing equitable practices, policies, and access. Moreover, the data showed that the probability of leader reflectiveness and mindfulness was intensified when school leadership and active parents were themselves people of color. The implications of the study may help shape district and school policies in communities experiencing gentrification.

They show up shouting at school board meetings with endless complaints. The press interviews them as though they are "regular moms" looking out for their children, but they are not. They are a well-funded façade for the Koch, Walton, and DeVos families to disrupt and destroy public education. In our new report, author and academician Maurice Cunningham pulls back the veil on the players, their tactics, and their funders. This must-read report identifies the who, how, and why behind "Merchants of Deception: Parent Props and Their Funders."

In March 2022 a random sample of one third of Stride K12 families (37,856) were emailed a survey asking parents a series of questions about their families' experiences in their children's current Stride K12-powered online schools and their experiences in their children's former schools. 1,949 parents completed the survey, and of that total, 1,613 had Stride K12 students who had attended another school prior to attending their current online schools. These families reside in one of 28 states that have Stride K12-powered schools that were included in the survey. The purpose of the survey, and this report, are to learn more about what parents value regarding the education of their children, why they chose to enroll their children in a Stride K12-powered online school, their degree of satisfaction with various aspects of their current online schools, and their satisfaction levels with their children's Stride K-12 powered schools as compared with their former schools, when applicable. The survey results indicate that parents have overwhelmingly positive views of how their children are faring at their Stride K12-powered online schools and that their children who did migrate from other schools faced a variety of challenges in their former schools.