School choice is a term for education options that allow students and families to select alternatives to traditional public schools.
School choice options include scholarship tax credit programs, open enrollment laws (which allow students to attend public schools other than their neighborhood school), , magnet schools, virtual schools, homeschooling, education savings accounts (ESAs), and individual education or deductions.
Forms
Scholarship tax credits
Scholarship tax credit programs grant individuals and businesses a full or partial credit toward their taxes for donations made to scholarship granting organizations (SGOs; also called school tuition organizations). SGOs use the donations to create scholarships that allow students to attend private schools or out-of-district public schools. These programs currently exist in fourteen states: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
Vouchers
Vouchers help pay for private school tuition, whether secular or religious.
Charter schools
Charter schools are independent public schools that are exempt from many of the regulations governing public schools. These exemptions grant charter schools some autonomy and flexibility with decision-making, such as teacher contracts, hiring, and curriculum. In return, charter schools are subject to stricter accountability on spending and academic performance. Most states and the national capital of Washington, D.C. have charter school laws, though they vary in how charter schools are approved.
Magnet schools
Magnet schools are public schools that specialize in science, technology, art or other specific areas. Magnet schools are not open to all children; some require a competitive examination. Magnet schools are an example of open enrollment programs, which refer to that allow families to choose public schools other than the ones they are assigned.
Homeschooling
Home education or homeschooling is education provided at home, provided primarily by a parent or under direct parental control. Informal home education predates public schools, and formal instruction in the home has at times been popular. As public education grew during the 1900s, homeschooling dropped. Since 2000, the number of children educated at home has increased, particularly in the US. Laws relevant to home education differ: in some states, the parent needs to notify the state that the child is to be educated at home, while in others, at least one parent must be a certified teacher and annual progress reports are reviewed by the state.
Inter-district enrollment
Intra-district open enrollment programs allow school choice within a district, while inter-district open enrollment allows families to choose schools outside the district.
To participate in California's District of Choice program, district governing boards declare themselves a District of Choice and set a quota for how many students to accept. School districts cannot discriminate among students, but can limit the number through a lottery system.
Education savings accounts
ESAs allow parents to receive public funds in a government-authorized savings account. These funds are often distributed in the form of a
debit card that can be used to pay for various services, such as private school tuition and fees, online programs, private tutoring, community college costs, higher education services, and other approved learning materials and services. ESAs can pay for a combination of public school courses and private services.
Tax credit/deduction
Some states allow parents to claim a tax credit or deduction to help fund certain educational expenses. These can include private school tuition, textbooks, school supplies and equipment, tutoring, and transportation.
Some other jurisdictions reduce the income tax for parents, so educational expenses can be more economical, which include private school tuition, supplies, computers, books, tutors, and transportation.
Online learning
Online learning allows students to work with teachers and their courses over the internet.
Composites
Course choice programs, public school courses, and special education therapies can be integrated into a student's curriculum, potentially with hybrid funding.
By country
Belgium
The Flemish community of Belgium has a high-performing education system as measured by PISA scores. Most private schools are subject to government targets and inspections. Schools are not allowed to select students via admissions tests, performance, religious background, or gender. The Flemish education system allows choice between teaching styles and competition, while suffering from relatively high socio-economic segregation.
Chile
In Chile, researchers reported that when controlling for student background (parental income and education), the difference in performance between public and private sectors is not significant.
Variation within each sector is greater than that between the two systems.
Sweden
Sweden's system of school choice is one of the world's freest, providing public funds for student choice of publicly or privately run school, including religious and for-profit schools.
Fifteen years after the 1993 reform, private school enrollment had increased from 1% to 10% of the student population.
United States
School choice is the subject of fierce debate in various state legislatures across the United States. The most common type of school choice in the United States, measured both by the number of programs and by the number of participating students, are scholarship tax credit programs. These allow individuals or corporations to receive tax credits toward their state taxes in exchange for donations made to non-profit organizations that grant
private school scholarships.
A similar subsidy may be provided by a state through a
school voucher program.
Debate
Arguments in favor
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Parental influence: School choice gives parents more influence over what students learn (e.g., academics vs trades) and the learning environment (e.g., discipline, uniforms, extra-curriculars).
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Student achievement: Caroline Hoxby suggested that competition among schools increases student achievement.
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Competition: Voucher supporters argue that choice creates competition between schools, and that failing schools can lose students and close. Competition encourages schools to create innovative programs, become more responsive to parental demands, and increase student achievement.
[Lessard, Claude and Andre Brassard. "Education Governance in Canada, 1990–2003: Trends and Significance" Canadian Perspectives on the Sociology of Education. Ed. Cynthia Levine-Rasky. Don Wells: Oxford University Press, 2009. 255–274.] Traditional public schools also have to compete, although even the least effective are rarely closed.
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Cost effectiveness: Studies undertaken by the Cato Institute and other American libertarian and conservative think tanks claim that privately run education costs less and produces superior outcomes.
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Mental health: One study reported that states that adopted charter school laws experienced a decline in adolescent suicides, and that private schooling reduces the likelihood of adults reporting mental health issues.
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Rights: According to the Organisation Internationale pour le Droit à l'Education et la Liberté d'Enseignement (OIDEL), the right to education is a human right and parents should be able to choose a school for their children without discrimination on the basis of finances. To advance freedom of education, OIDEL promotes a greater parity between public and private schooling systems.
In the United States, support for school choice has been paired with parental rights. For example, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin asserted that he won his 2021 race by emphasizing that parents have the right to make decisions about their children’s education
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Housing prices: One study reported that school choice programs in Seoul, South Korea, reduced housing prices in high-performing districts more than in low-performing districts.
Arguments against
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Profiteering: School choice measures are criticized as encouraging profiteering.
Even with vouchers and other financial assistance to parents, opponents of school choice believe that K–12 education should not be a cost item in the for-profit sector. As public school advocate Diane Ravitch wrote, "Free public education—open to all and democratically controlled—is one of the pillars of our democracy."
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Constitutionality: Some school choice measures are criticized as violating church-state separation. The constitutionality of state-sponsored school choice laws has been challenged by school board associations, public school districts, teacher unions, associations of school business officials, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and People for the American Way.
[The ABC's of School Choice, 2014 Ed., The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, 109.]
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Destruction of the public system: School choice has been criticized for aiming to privatize public education,
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Racism: School choice policies have been accused of racism, as they came into prominence shortly after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision required desegregation of public schools.
See also
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School-choice mechanism: an algorithm for matching pupils to schools in a way that respects the pupils' preferences and the schools' priorities.
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School voucher
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Tax choice
