Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-2026
Keywords
School choice, supply, market response, regulatory burden
Abstract
Using administrative data available from a variety of public sources, our research team examined the ways in which state and local regulatory burdens along with state political and economic factors work to encourage or depress the supply response of private school providers in the years following the adoption of school choice policies. We tracked counts of private schools using NCES and state departments of education at baseline year 1 of program implementation and a second outcome variable measuring the change from baseline to the current year (2024). We estimate the effect of state political and socioeconomic controls, two regulatory and compliance indexes, and public-school quality on both outcomes, using robust standard errors clustered by state. Results suggest that certain state level regulatory burdens constrain the supply response to market demand, with larger effects in states with higher levels of student density and poverty. We discuss policy implications and recommend future iterations of work to understand better the full choice landscape, in particular regarding whether private school provider availability is sufficient to meet the increasing demand. As school choice expands, policymakers must assess the framework of regulatory requirements that are necessary and those which are not to ensure quality educational offerings.
Citation
Wolf, P. J., Ritter, C., & Gallo, M. (2026). Available Space… The Final Frontier An Empirical Analysis of the Heterogeneous Regulatory Burdens that Oversee Private Schools within States with School Choice Policies. The University of Arkansas, Department of Education Reform (EDRE) Working Paper Series Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/edrepub/187
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