In reality, there have been 13 randomized controlled gold standard studies of the
effect of school choice policies, all but one of which found a statistically significant positive impact.
As for the research on competitive effects
of school choice policies in general — vouchers, tax - credit scholarships, and charters all together — the jury is still out, said David Arsen, a professor of education policy and K - 12 educational administration at Michigan State University.
But
critics of school choice policies argue that these reforms will lead to increased segregation by race and class as more motivated families move to better schools, leaving the most disadvantaged students behind in the worst public schools.
Osborne also frets about the
impact of school choice policies on the students «left» behind at their assigned district schools, but the research literature shows that they benefit as well.
Critics and
supporters of school choice policies alike have raised concerns about what your proposed expansion of school choice could mean for the future of public education in the United States.
According to Erica Frankenberg, associate professor of education and demography and co-director of the Center for Education and Civil Rights at Penn State, the new
generation of school choice policies adopted in response to legal decisions may actually be increasing school inequalities, despite their goals of maintaining integrated schools.
But the results of this investigation nonetheless advance our understanding of the effects
of school choice policies by providing the first experimentally generated information on the long - term impact of a voucher intervention.
In fact, though, the systemic effects
of school choice policies depend first on the local context in which the policies are implemented and second on the rules that govern the choices of parents and schools.
Despite the growing diversity of the nation's school - aged population, the
embrace of school choice policy across the country has coincided with an increase in segregation across race, socioeconomic status, and student ability.
When looking at the groups» margins for those
types of school choice policies, it is clear Champions and Dissidents are about equally likely to support school vouchers (+34 points vs. +28 points, respectively) and charter schools (+37 points vs. +40 points, respectively).
Of course students can also be segregated within schools, such as through the classrooms to which they are assigned or courses they decide to take, but that type of segregation is not usually the focus of
critics of school choice policies.
Not all of these moves can be ascribed directly to the
impact of school choice policies, but taken together they mark a concerted effort to make the district more attractive to parents in an increasingly competitive environment.