Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-30-2014

Keywords

school choice, voucher program, charter schools, private schools, magnet schools

Abstract

Research about parental school choice has been around nearly as long as the policies themselves. The first school voucher program, established in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1990, came into being along with a government-mandated evaluation of its effectiveness. Although chartering schools was not evaluated systematically until a decade after such schools of choice were established, the past decade has seen an explosion of studies sufficient to inform a meta-analysis. Magnet schools and other forms of intra-district and even inter-district school choice are being studied, though not as extensively as vouchers and charters. The overwhelming majority of studies of parental school choice are summative evaluations that seek to determine if such programs, in general, improve outcomes for students and families. While some existing studies explore the conditions under which school choice appears to be most effective—the positive mediators of choice or school choice “best practices”—few empirical studies of parental school choice are formative in providing intelligence on how choice systems and choice schools might be better designed and operated so as to maximize positive program effects. Such formative assessment is important because, if implemented properly, it would permit schools of choice to operate as “learning organizations” focused on continuous directed improvement. This paper examines these questions from the perspective of someone who has produced largely summative evaluations of private school choice programs for the past 14 years, along with a few formative evaluations, and who currently is exploring ways that research can better provide guidance to program designers and operators so that school choice might better satisfy its potential. Theories from psychometrics and social science are used to frame the discussion.

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