The first major battle over school choice came out of struggles over equalizing and integrating schools in the civil rights era, when it became apparent that choice could be either a serious barrier or a significant tool for reaching these goals. The second large and continuing movement for choice was part of the very different anti-government, individualistic, market-based movement of a more conservative period in which many of the lessons of that earlier period were forgotten, though choice was once again presented as the answer to racial inequality. This book brings civil rights back into the center of the debate and tries to move from doctrine to empirical research in exploring the many forms of choice and their very different consequences for equity in U.S. schools. Leading researchers conclude that although helping minority children remains a central justification for choice proponents, ignoring the essential civil rights dimensions of choice plans risks compounding rather than remedying racial inequality.

February issue includes Appendix entitled Directory of United States Government periodicals and subscription publications; September issue includes List of depository libraries; June and December issues include semiannual index

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Diversified schools, in which students of various racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic characteristics are balanced, have a positive contextual effect on achievement for all groups compared to schools with homogeneous student bodies that tend to help affluent, white students and harm poor students and students of color. The authors advise school districts convicted for operating segregated schools on how to make all schools schools of choice that must compete for students who enroll in them. And it discusses ways of being fair and just in the distribution of educational resources to affluent as well as poor students and to white students as well as students of color. School systems that are reluctant to use racial fairness guidelines in the enrollment process are advised to use socioeconomic fairness guidelines, because the absence of any enrollment fairness guidelines tends to result in the return to segregation and a dual school system helpful to a few but harmful to many students. This book suggests ways of empowering parents and professional educators and it discusses how to achieve a good outcome for urban as well as rural school districts and for large as well as small school systems. Among communities mentioned in this study are Cambridge, Boston, Brockton MA; St.Lucie County, Lee County, Hillsborough County (including Tampa) FL; Santa Rosa County CA; Seattle WA; New Haven CT; Rockford IL; Milwaukee WI; and Charleston County SC.

Since the early 1990s when the nation’s first charter school was opened in Minneapolis, the scope and availability of school-based options to parents has steadily expanded. No longer can public education be characterized as a monopoly. Sponsored by the National Center on School Choice (NCSC), this handbook makes readily available the most rigorous and policy-relevant research on K-12 school choice. Coverage includes charters, vouchers, home schooling, magnet schools, cyber schools, and other forms of choice, with the ultimate goal of defining the current state of this evolving field of research, policy, and practice. Key Features include: Comprehensive – this is the first book to provide a comprehensive review of what is known about the major forms of school choice from multiple perspectives: historical, political, economic, legal, methodological, and international. It also includes work on the governance, structure, process, effectiveness, and costs of school choice. Readable – the editors and authors have taken care to translate rigorous research findings into comprehensible prose accessible to a broad range of readers. International – in addition to thorough coverage of domestic research, the volume also draws on international and comparative studies of choice in foreign countries. Expertise – the National Center on School Choice (NCSC) is a consortium that is headquartered at Vanderbilt University and includes the following partners: Brookings Institution, Brown University, Harvard University, National Bureau of Economic Research, Northwest Evaluation Association, and Stanford University. This book is suitable for researchers, faculty and graduate students in education policy studies, politics of education, and social foundations of education. It should also be of interest to inservice administrators and policy makers.