School Choice Programs Research Articles

Are Hybrid Schoolers Reluctant to Participate in Private School Choice Programs? Experimental Evidence from a National Sample of Hybrid School Leaders

ABSTRACT Private school choice programs are publicly-funded programs that provide families with funding to attend a private school of their choice. Since 2021, 15 states have enacted or expanded choice legislation, even making homeschoolers eligible to participate. However, homeschoolers are often reluctant to participate due to proposed regulations. We survey a national sample of hybrid school leaders, a sector that shares similarities with homeschoolers in modality, and randomly assign hypothetical regulations to them. We find that 65% are willing to encourage participation in the absence of regulations, but regulations reduce leaders’ willingness to encourage participation by about 31 points.

Charting the Path to the Outsourcing of Discrimination Through School Choice

ABSTRACT The growth of state laws creating private school vouchers and charter schools has mounting and alarming ramifications for students’ rights, and those ramifications are shaped by a complex and shifting set of legal rules. This article explains the interplay between the increase of these school-choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent free-exercise decisions, long-standing antidiscrimination laws, and the now-tenuous applicability of those legal protections for choice students. It concludes by considering the political ramifications of these changes, which will likely be very different in “blue” and “red” states.

Research Design with Weighted Lotteries in School Choice

Centralized admissions are an integral part of parental school choice programs. Most districts use a version of the deferred acceptance algorithm to assign applicants to schools. Centralized admissions produce data with quasi-experimental variation in student assignment that is integral in program evaluation. Recent developments in research design consider the basic version of the deferred acceptance algorithm. However, most districts adapt advanced versions of the deferred acceptance algorithm to implement their diversity policy in admissions, such as favoring applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds in lottery tie-breaking. We develop research design for data from the deferred acceptance algorithm with weighted lotteries.

School Choice and Improvement Program—Magnet Schools Assistance Program (ED)

School Choice and Improvement Program—Magnet Schools Assistance Program (ED)

WORST CHOICE FOR SCHOOL CHOICE: TUITION TAX CREDITS ARE A BAD IDEA AND DIRECT FUNDING IS WISER

School choice is on the rise, and states use various mechanisms to implement it. One prevalent mechanism is also a uniquely problematic one: the tax credit. Tax credits are deficient at equitably distributing a benefit like school choice; they are costly, and they invite fraud. Instead of using tax credits, states opting for school choice programs should use direct funding. Direct funding will more efficiently achieve the goals of school choice because it can be regulated like any other government benefit, even if it ends up subsidizing religious private schools. Tax credits’ prevalence is not inexplicable, of course. It is based on a prior legal understanding that states were constitutionally restricted from directly funding religious schools. Historically, states that wanted to include religious private schools in their school choice programs therefore felt pushed to use tax credits as their only constitutionally viable option. However, the landscape has changed. The Supreme Court held in 2022 that direct funding of religious private schools is not only constitutionally permissible, but it is required if a state funds non-religious private schools and provides no neutral basis for excluding religious ones. The initial reason for tax credits’ popularity therefore no longer exists; both tax credits and direct funding alike are constitutionally acceptable. It is time, therefore, to revisit the merits of tax credits and ask whether, knowing what we know now, it is worth disposing of them in favor of direct funding. This Article answers that question with a resounding yes. Tax credits carry significant disadvantages—specifically, inequitable distribution and difficulties in regulation—that direct funding does not. Now that the law is clear, states choosing to sponsor school choice should discontinue their use of tax credits in favor of direct funding.

A Time for Choosing: The Impact of Uniformity Clauses in State Constitutions on School Choice Programs

A Time for Choosing: The Impact of Uniformity Clauses in State Constitutions on School Choice Programs

Is Reputational Pressure Enough to Create Competitive School Choice Effects? Evidence from Seoul’s School Choice Policy

During the pandemic, a number of states instituted hold-harmless funding policies to protect school district financially from declining enrollments. In addition, some school choice policies have protected traditional public schools financially from declining enrollments. Together, these policies raise the question of whether competitive effects can exist in a policy environment of reduced financial pressure. Theoretically, despite the lack of financial pressure, schools could feel competitive pressure in other ways including a loss of reputation as students move to schools of choice. To provide insights on whether schools can improve without the threat of financial loss, we examine the Seoul school choice program which introduced autonomous private high schools (APHSs) in the context in which there is equalized funding across schools. More specifically, we examine whether competition induced by APHSs affects the achievement of students attending traditional public and private schools. The effect of APHSs is identified by exploiting plausible exogenous APHSs’ entry through the random assignment of students. We find a small and positive effect of APHS penetration on the Korean and English achievement of private school students while finding no effects for traditional public schools, which have limited ability to respond.

Effects of Maturing Private School Choice Programs on Public School Students

Using a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and leveraging a student fixed effects design, we explore how a Florida private school choice program affected public school students’ outcomes as the program matured and scaled up. We observe growing benefits (higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism and suspension rates) to students attending public schools with more preprogram private school options as the program matured. Effects are particularly pronounced for lower-income students, but results are positive for more affluent students as well. Local and district-wide private school competition are both independently related to student outcomes. (JEL H75, I21, I22, I28)

The Impact of Public School Choice: Evidence from Los Angeles’s Zones of Choice

Abstract Does a school district that expands school choice provide better outcomes for students than a neighborhood-based assignment system? This article studies the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program, a school choice initiative of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left attendance zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We study market-level effects of choice on student achievement and college enrollment using a difference-in-differences design. Student outcomes in ZOC markets increased markedly, narrowing achievement and college enrollment gaps between ZOC neighborhoods and the rest of the district. The effects of ZOC are larger for schools exposed to more competition, supporting the notion that competition is a key channel. Demand estimates suggest families place substantial weight on schools’ academic quality, providing schools with competition-induced incentives to improve their effectiveness. The evidence demonstrates that public school choice programs have the potential to improve school quality and reduce neighborhood-based disparities in educational opportunity.

Principled Politics, Regulatory Reluctance: Conditions Moderating Private School Choice Program Participation

ABSTRACT Private school leaders consider the potential benefits of private school choice program participation against costs associated with program regulations. Rational Choice Theory suggests leaders in states with conditions related to greater likelihood of program passage may be less willing to accept such regulations. To test this theory, we merge experimental data from a national study of private school choice program regulations with state-level data on political partisanship and union strength. We find limited evidence of heterogeneity by partisanship. We find leaders in states with weaker teachers’ unions are more reluctant to accept standardized testing requirements and copay prohibition.

Are the school choices of indigenous students affected by discrimination? Evidence from Chile

ABSTRACT A common criticisms of school choice programs is that, instead of improving student achievement, they would increase school segregation. Parents may use different criteria to choose a school, such as proximity, school quality, or the school's ethnic/racial composition. As a result, the system would be segregated based on the parent's preferences. This research examines the school preferences of indigenous parents and whether ethnic discrimination influences their decision-making process. Longitudinal national-level data from Chile were analyzed using OLS with fixed effects. The results show that indigenous students, particularly those who have suffered ethnic discrimination in middle school, prefer high schools with a higher percentage of indigenous students. Furthermore, it was found that the level of acts of discrimination occurring in middle schools increases as the percentage of indigenous students rises. However, when the proportion of indigenous and non-indigenous students is similar, indigenous students are less likely to face discrimination.

Charter school proliferation and school district fiscal stress, a chicken‐egg problem

AbstractCharter schools have become one of the most popular school choice programs in recent years. While being accused of endangering the fiscal health of local school districts, charter school proliferation could also be the result of fiscal stress of local school districts. However, this reverse causation has not been fully studied in the literature. Using data of local school districts in Ohio from 2011 to 2019, I adopt an Instrumental Variable approach to investigate the possible scenario that the rapid growth in charter school enrollment could be caused by fiscal stress of school districts. The results suggest that the inadequate funding from state and local sources had led to a significant increase in charter school enrollment for urban districts, although the charter demand is inelastic to public funding changes. Students could be left with no better options but to choose charter schools over failing traditional public schools.

The Effects of Regulations on Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence from the United States

Private school leaders weigh costs and benefits when deciding whether to participate in school voucher programs. Regulatory costs associated with accepting voucher funding could reduce private school leaders’ willingness to participate. We test this hypothesis through the first random assignment analysis of the effects of various regulations on the expressed willingness of private school leaders to participate in hypothetical voucher programs that draws upon national data. We randomly assign different regulations to U.S. private school leaders and ask them whether they would participate in a hypothetical school voucher program during the following school year. Relative to no regulations, we find that open-enrollment mandates reduce the likelihood that private school leaders report being certain to participate in a hypothetical choice program by about 14 percentage points, or 67%. The requirement that private schools accept the voucher funding amount as payment-in-full reduces the likelihood that private school leaders report being certain to participate by 16 percentage points, or 77%. Some regulations are more likely to deter private schools with higher reported tuitions, higher enrollment trends, more specialization, and more climate problems.

Marketing and School Choice: A Systematic Literature Review

School-choice programs may increase schools' incentives for marketing rather than improving their educational offering. This article systematically reviews the literature on the marketing activities of primary and secondary schools worldwide. The 81 articles reviewed show that schools’ marketing has yet to be tackled by marketing academics or other social scientists outside the education field. Market-oriented U.S. charter schools and their international equivalents have stimulated recent research, but geographical gaps remain, particularly in countries with long-established school-choice policies and in rural areas. Schools deploy a range of marketing techniques with the intensity of activity directly correlated to the level of local competition and their position in the local hierarchy. Studies have analyzed schools’ use of market scanning, specific words and images in brochures, branding, segmentation, and targeting. These marketing activities are rarely accompanied by substantive curricular change, however, and may even contribute to social division through targeting or deceptive marketing activity.

Exploring the Role of Family-School Partnerships in School Choice

Parental access to useful information about schools continues to be a structural barrier that limits the equity potential of school choice programs. While “information interventions” or simplified and readable knowledge resources show promise for counteracting information disparities between families, this line of research has provided limited insight on the particular preferences and needs of parents or the value of person-to-person interpretive assistance in school decisions. This exploratory study uses qualitative methods to investigate parent-school collaboration for the purpose of school selection in Washington, D.C. Drawing on a social capital framework, this study analyzes information transactions from parents’ perspectives to clarify ways in which school personnel currently function as liaisons of choice. Findings from this study indicate future opportunities for districts to improve the outcome of school choice through better training of school and district personnel.

The Effect of Private School Choice Regulations on School Participation: Experimental Evidence from the Christian School Sector

ABSTRACT Private school choice programs’ success depends partly on the supply of private schools. Many parents prioritize a religious education for their children. Therefore, it is important to consider how religious private schools may respond to various program regulations. We conducted an experimental study surveying a national sample of 354 leaders of Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) member schools, the second largest private school organization of any kind in the United States. We find evidence that while over four-fifths of Christian school leaders are inclined to participate with no changes to school operations, open enrollment mandates reduce participation rates by 62 percentage points and employment regulations reduce participation rates by 79 percentage points.

Who supports MO private school choice? Evidence from likely voters in Missouri

In the first half of 2021, 33 states considered new private school choice legislation. Despite this legislative interest, public opinion on private school choice remains varied. In this paper, we examine voter support for private school choice in Missouri, a politically conservative state that lacked a private school choice program until 2021. We conduct a survey experiment to gauge support for the expansion of private school choice to religious schools, assess preferences for universal or targeted student access, and explore opinions regarding the regulation of participating private schools. We find voters are significantly less likely to support voucher expansion when primed to consider that vouchers could be used at religiously affiliated schools. Political ideology, racial identity, college exposure, and family income are significant predictors of voucher support. Regulation support varies widely, with the strongest support for adherence to state testing requirements and the lowest support for waiving admissions requirements for voucher students. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for Missouri’s recently passed private school choice program, particularly by considering ways in which political compromise may be reached to implement the program in a manner conscious of heterogeneous voter preferences.

The Potential of Catholic Schools: Public Virtues through Private Voucher

Recent US Supreme Court cases signal a likely increase in calls for K-12 school choice programs that include the option of enrolling in religious schools. In turn, criticism of religious school-inclusive school choice programming is likely to shift to policy and values-based critiques. This article addresses two allegations of Catholic primary and secondary school deficiencies in achieving objectives important to a pluralist society, allegations that would invalidate indirect state support of Catholic schools. By analyzing the aesthetics of Hans Georg Gadamer and Aristotelian moral theory in light of American Catholic schools’ potential, this paper rejects claims that Catholic education is unlikely to meet core needs of a contemporary pluralist society.

The Valuation of Local School Quality under School Choice

School choice programs break the link between residential location and school attendance, and should weaken the capitalization of school quality into house prices. For the first time, I quantify the effect of one such program—charter school expansions—across several states using a dataset covering charter entries and house prices. I embed an event study of charter entry into a boundary discontinuity design and find that, on average, school choice decreases the valuation of traditional schools by four percentage points. Suggestive evidence shows school choice can lead to neighborhood change through resorting as school boundaries become less important. (JEL H75, I21, I24, I28, R23, R31)

Racialized Perceptions of Anticipated School Belonging.

Families indicate that fit and safety are priorities in school selections. It is not clear, however, whether school racial composition shapes families' perceptions of anticipated school belonging. Using a survey experiment with students and parents actively choosing NYC schools, I find that families expressed racialized judgments of belonging. Among schools that were otherwise similar, respondents anticipated feeling most welcome in schools with the highest proportion of their racial group and least welcome in schools with the lowest portions of their ingroup. Families' race-based assessments of school quality could be a key mechanism to explain racial segregation in school choice programs.