The twelve policy approaches to increased school choice

Journal of School Choice

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 4-19

  Merrifield, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO   (United States)

Author keywords

Attendence zone; Charter school; Targeted; Tax credit; Uniformity; Voucher

Indexed keywords

EID: 65349104814     PISSN: 15582159     EISSN: 15582167     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/15582150802007267     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. See, for example, the Heritage Foundation's description of "Types of School Choice." Retrieved from: http://www.heritage.org/research/education/schoolchoice/typesofschoolchoice.cfm It omits several of the approaches described below and does not differentiate between the broad categories of tuition tax credits and tuition vouchers.
2. David N. Plank and Gary Sykes, Choosing Choice: School Choice in International Perspective (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003), i-x.
3. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1983).
4. United States Commission on National Security/21st Century, Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change-Phase III Report (2001).
5. Asst. Secretary of Education Eugene Hickok quoted in Cato Policy Report (Cato Institute, 2001), 7.
6. John Merrifield, Dismal Science: Shortcomings of the U.S. School Choice Research, and How to Address Them. (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, in press).
7. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).
8. For example, interdistrict public school choice allows switching to a nearby school without the cost of moving to the attendance area of the preferred school. Vouchers lower the relative price of eligible private schools.
9. Seventy-four percent of U.S. schoolchildren attend an assigned neighborhood public school. Churches run and subsidize 83.1% of the tiny U.S. private sector (10.1% of K-12 enrollment; 2003 data). Retrieved from: "Fast Facts:" http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=6, accessed 3/31/08.
10. Byron Brown, "Why Governments Run Schools," Economics of Education Review 11, no. 4 (1992): 287-300.
11. Mark Holmes, The Reformation of Canada's Schools (Montreal; McGill-Queens University Press, 1998).
12. Arthur G. Powell, Eleanor Farrar, and David K Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
13. Lydia Segal, Battling Corruption in America's Public Schools (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004).
14. Powell, Farrar, and Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School.
15. Plank,.and Sykes, Choosing Choice: School Choice in International Perspective, i-x.
16. John Merrifield, "Specialization in a Competitive Education Industry: Areas and Impacts," Cato Journal 25, no. 2 (spring/summer 2005): 317-336.
17. Richard D. Komer and Clark Neily, School Choice and State Constitutions (Arlington, Va.: Institute for Justice and American Legislative Exchange Council, 2007).
18. John Merrifield, "Charter School Legislation: Disaster, Detour, Irrelevant, or Reform Tool," Journal of School Choice 1, no. 1 (2006): 3-22.
19. Eileen Ahearn, Public Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities (Arlington, Va.: Council for Exceptional Children, 2001), 2.
20. Merrifield, "Charter School Legislation," 8.
21. David Kirkpatrick, "Many Teachers Favor Charter Schools Although Their Unions Don't," U.S. Freedom Foundation School Report-671, April 29, 2004.
22. Center for Education Reform. Retrieved from: "Charter Schools", http://www.edre-form.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=document&documentID=1964.
23. Komer, and Neily, School Choice and State Constitutions.
24. ID, MO, NH, OK, OR, SD, VA, VT, and WA. Eight more (AK, CA, FL, HI, KY, MA, MI, and WY), perhaps nine (DE unclear), states ban indirect aid to all private schools.
25. Komer, and Neily, School Choice and State Constitutions.
26. Utah is the Utah Special Needs Voucher. FloridaA is the voucher for students attending failed schools, recently ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court. FloridaB is the McKay Special Needs voucher.
27. Per capita state and local tax liability is $3698. Retrieved from: http://ww.taxfoundation.org/files/statelocalcollectionspc-20070622.swf "State and Local Tax Collections Per Capita".
28. But 26% of the population is under 18 years old, so the per adult liability is approximately $5000. Retrieved from: http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-12.pdf "Age: 2000".
29. http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statistics.html "Statistics About Non-Public Education in the United States".
30. Andrew Coulson, "Arizona Public and Private Schools: A Statistical Analysis," Goldwater Institute Policy Report #213. Retrieved from: http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/Common/Files/Multimedia/1137.pdf.
31. Among the respondents to Coulson's Arizona survey, tuition averages 80 percent of school expenditure.
32. Komer and Neily, School Choice and State Constitutions.
33. Donation credit programs (AZ, FL, IL, IA, MN, and PA). Retrieved from: http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200504150.asp "Education Tax Credits".
34. According to the 2000 Census, File 4, 31.5 percent of households are not families. Retrieved from: http://factfinder.census.gov/.
35. Less than half of families have school-age children. Retrieved from: http://ftp.bls.gov/pub/news.release/History/famee.04192001. news says there were 71.68 million family households in 2000; 34.34 million had children less than 18 years old, 19.38 million had children 6-17 years old, and none younger. Some of the 14.96 million families with children under 6 years old certainly also had some children in school, but the data did not allow for a precise count of the number of families with children 5-17, the traditional measure of "school-age"-certainly well below 34.34/ 71.68 (48%), but exactly how far is unknown.
36. Andrew Coulson, Toward Market Education: Are Vouchers or Tax Credits the Better Path? (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2001).
37. Adam Schaeffer, The Public Education Tax Credit, (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2007).
38. Coulson, Toward Market Education.
39. Samuel Blumenfeld, Is Public Education Necessary? (Boise, Idaho: The Paradigm Company, 1981).
40. James Tooley, Reclaiming Education (London: Cassell, 2000).
41. James Tooley, E.G. West: Economic Liberalism and the Role of Government in Education, vol. 14 of Continuum Library of Educational Thought (London: Continuum, in press).
42. Edwin G. West, Education and the State, 3rd ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1994).
43. The Netherlands is the best example. Their 90-year-old voucher program gradually acquired significant restrictions. Charles Glenn and Jan de Groof, Finding the Right Balance (Utrecht: Lemma, 2002).
44. The better known, more recently created Chilean and Swedish universal voucher programs were enacted with significant restrictions. John Merrifield, Parental Choice as an Education Reform Catalyst: Global Lessons (Wellington, NZ: Business Roundtable, 2005).
45. Schaeffer, The Public Education Tax Credit.
46. Paul E. Peterson and Chad Noyes, "School Choice in Milwaukee," in New Schools for a New Century, eds. Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti (London: Yale University Press, 1997).
47. George Clowes, Still No Consensus on School Choice (Chicago: Heartland Institute, 2005). Retrieved from: http://www.heartland.org/pdf/16914.pdf (accessed September 8, 2005).
48. Clowes, Still No Consensus on School Choice.
49. Frederick Hess, Revolution at the Margins (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2002).
50. Clowes, Still No Consensus on School Choice.
51. Paul Teske and Mark Schneider, "What Research Can Tell Policymakers About School Choice," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 20, no. 4 (2001): 609-631.
52. http://vote2000.sos.ca.gov/VoterGuide/text/text_analysis_38.htm. "Analysis by the Legislative Analyst".
53. For example, see the homepage of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State: http://www.honestedu.org/index.php.
54. and these links at the Ludwig von Mises Institute website: http://www.mises.org/story/6.
55. http://www.mises.org/story/260 and http://www.mises.org/story/1399.
56. Blumenfeld, Is Public Education Necessary?; Tooley, Reclaiming Education.
57. Tooley,. E.G. West.
58. West, Education and the State.
59. Milton Friedman, "The Role of Government in Education," in Economics and the Public Interest, ed. R. A. Solo (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955).
60. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
61. Edwin G. West, Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1965).
62. Tooley, E.G. West, 243.
63. Richard Vedder argues against the widely held belief that schooling does not just benefit the students. Richard Vedder, "Market-Based Education: Can We Learn from Universities," Cato Journal 25, no. 2 (2005): 279-296.
64. Walter McMahon measured significant externalities. Walter McMahon, "An Analysis of Education Externalities with Applications to Development in the Deep South," Contemporary Economic Policy 25, no. 3 (2007): 459-482.
65. James Tooley and Pauline Dixon, Private Education is Good for the Poor (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2005).
66. James Tooley and Pauline Dixon, "De Facto Privatization of Education and the Poor: Implications of a Study from Sub-Saharan Africa and India," Compare 36, no. 4 (2006): 443-462.
67. Geeta G. Kingdon, "The Quality and Efficiency of Private and Public Education: A Case Study in Urban India," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 58, no. 1 (1996): 57-81.
68. Joel Turtel, Public Schools, Public Menace (New York: Liberty Books, 2004-2005).
69. These are the latest examples: Joel E. Cohen, David E. Bloom, and Martin B. Malin, eds., Educating All Children: A Global Agenda (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007).
70. Aaron Benavot, Julia Resnik, and Javier Corrales, Global Educational Expansion: Historical Legacies and Political Obstacles (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2006).
71. Ongoing and planned research by at least James Tooley, Yong Bao, Pauline Dixon, and John Merrifield.