The current landscape of school choice in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Mark Berends

Over the last 30 years, the school choice movement has been one of the most prominent large-scale reform efforts in American education. In recent years, charter schools and voucher programs, in particular, have been a focus of policy makers and philanthropists. Mark Berends presents an overview of these two models, their prevalence, and what research says about their effectiveness.

Author(s):  
Robert Garda ◽  
Wendy Hensel ◽  
Paul O’Neill

School choice is one of the primary education reforms currently sweeping the United States. School choice systems create unique challenges for students with disabilities and schools of choice in serving such students. While there are a variety of school choice systems, this chapter focuses on three types of school choice models—charter schools, portfolio school districts, and voucher programs—and the unique policy and legal challenges they present for students with disabilities. Specifically, this chapter examines the interplay of these school choice reforms with the United States laws regarding students with disabilities: the Individuals with Education in Disabilities Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504), and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The challenges, barriers and problems are examined and solutions are proposed that consider both the laws regarding students with disabilities and the structures of the choice programs.


Author(s):  
Verneshia (Necia) Boone

Charter schools are perhaps known to many people as community schools that are publicly funded. Educators and policy makers of the United States consider public schools in which tuition for primary and secondary students is free. A few community leaders and public officials have disclosed that selected charter school providers have too much flexibility in how they operate the schools. Perhaps their beliefs are such because most of the charter or community schools are operated under a contract in partnership with a sponsoring entity (Center for Education, 2008). According to educators and political leaders located in the Midwest region of the United States, charter schools were designed to address the current state of educational programs and to introduce an alternative model to traditional public education for economically disadvantaged students. For the last decade, research has shown that the goals and objectives of charter schools and charter school providers and leaders have been a contentious subject matter for United States educators and policy makers (Center for Education, 2008). The reason is perhaps linked to personal beliefs that charter school providers or leaders drain funding from local public school districts and do not offer disadvantaged students a better education. The case study provides an overview about Duke and Duchess Technology Centers as well as Triumph Management Company and their, products and services, competition, management structure, leadership styles, and recent challenges. Questions appear at the end of the case study for students to discuss and debate.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Dr. Julie Hentges ◽  
Dr. Doug D. Thomas

<p>Charter schools are a controversial, but vibrant, component of the current educational landscape, now serving over 3.1 million students in approximately 6900 schools across the United States.  A unique aspect of this movement has been the establishment of alternative authorizers, and specifically universities, to approve and provide oversight to these public schools.  Campus leaders and policy makers must consider numerous variables regarding a university’s involvement with charter schools.  What are the implications of school choice on university policies and practices? Should universities be “authorizers”, granting charters to schools in direct competition with the traditional public school system? Can universities provide the required “oversight” mandated by the charter school laws, as well as providing “support” for the schools? What opportunities for partnerships and practicum experiences exist?  The article provides an overview of issues that arise with public charter schools authorized by universities.  With 18 years of experiences as a public university on the forefront of enabling charter legislation and the “sponsorship” of inner-city public charter schools, the authors provide a historical perspective of the role of universities within the school choice movement, including oversight roles and supportive programs within the unique and growing phenomenon of school choice. </p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Paula Louzano ◽  
Lara Elena Ramos Simielli

This article analyzes the case of school choice in the United States and its implications for the Brazilian context. This discussion is important to Brazil, given the fact that key actors are starting to advocate in favor of introducing charter schools and vouchers in the country. Evidence from countries that introduced this model can help shed some light on this debate. In this article, we will analyze the overall performance of school choice in the United States, especially charter schools, focusing on its implications on educational equity. The Brazilian educational system is highly unequal. Thus, if charter schools are not helping to enhance the overall quality and equity in the United States, it may not be a policy to be pursued in Brazil. In this scenario, focusing on the idea that school choice is the answer may divert the attention from systemic policies that can contribute to improve education such as high-quality early childhood education, increased education funding, after-school programs, and teacher professional development. 


1966 ◽  
Vol 05 (02) ◽  
pp. 67-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. I. Lourie ◽  
W. Haenszeland

Quality control of data collected in the United States by the Cancer End Results Program utilizing punchcards prepared by participating registries in accordance with a Uniform Punchcard Code is discussed. Existing arrangements decentralize responsibility for editing and related data processing to the local registries with centralization of tabulating and statistical services in the End Results Section, National Cancer Institute. The most recent deck of punchcards represented over 600,000 cancer patients; approximately 50,000 newly diagnosed cases are added annually.Mechanical editing and inspection of punchcards and field audits are the principal tools for quality control. Mechanical editing of the punchcards includes testing for blank entries and detection of in-admissable or inconsistent codes. Highly improbable codes are subjected to special scrutiny. Field audits include the drawing of a 1-10 percent random sample of punchcards submitted by a registry; the charts are .then reabstracted and recoded by a NCI staff member and differences between the punchcard and the results of independent review are noted.


Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.


2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 46-82
Author(s):  
Fathi Malkawi

This paper addresses some of the Muslim community’s concerns regarding its children’s education and reflects upon how education has shaped the position of other communities in American history. It argues that the future of Muslim education will be influenced directly by the present realities and future trends within American education in general, and, more importantly, by the well-calculated and informed short-term and long-term decisions and future plans taken by the Muslim community. The paper identifies some areas in which a wellestablished knowledge base is critical to making decisions, and calls for serious research to be undertaken to furnish this base.


Author(s):  
Anne Nassauer

This book provides an account of how and why routine interactions break down and how such situational breakdowns lead to protest violence and other types of surprising social outcomes. It takes a close-up look at the dynamic processes of how situations unfold and compares their role to that of motivations, strategies, and other contextual factors. The book discusses factors that can draw us into violent situations and describes how and why we make uncommon individual and collective decisions. Covering different types of surprise outcomes from protest marches and uprisings turning violent to robbers failing to rob a store at gunpoint, it shows how unfolding situations can override our motivations and strategies and how emotions and culture, as well as rational thinking, still play a part in these events. The first chapters study protest violence in Germany and the United States from 1960 until 2010, taking a detailed look at what happens between the start of a protest and the eruption of violence or its peaceful conclusion. They compare the impact of such dynamics to the role of police strategies and culture, protesters’ claims and violent motivations, the black bloc and agents provocateurs. The analysis shows how violence is triggered, what determines its intensity, and which measures can avoid its outbreak. The book explores whether we find similar situational patterns leading to surprising outcomes in other types of small- and large-scale events: uprisings turning violent, such as Ferguson in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015, and failed armed store robberies.


Author(s):  
Richard Gowan

During Ban Ki-moon’s tenure, the Security Council was shaken by P5 divisions over Kosovo, Georgia, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Yet it also continued to mandate and sustain large-scale peacekeeping operations in Africa, placing major burdens on the UN Secretariat. The chapter will argue that Ban initially took a cautious approach to controversies with the Council, and earned a reputation for excessive passivity in the face of crisis and deference to the United States. The second half of the chapter suggests that Ban shifted to a more activist pressure as his tenure went on, pressing the Council to act in cases including Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, and Syria. The chapter will argue that Ban had only a marginal impact on Council decision-making, even though he made a creditable effort to speak truth to power over cases such as the Central African Republic (CAR), challenging Council members to live up to their responsibilities.


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