National Private School Choice

Displaying 31-60 of 139 results

Commentary

7.24.2025

Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

School choice is great, but the churn it allows comes at a cost

Ronak Shah

On Tuesday, the second week of state testing, I noticed an unfamiliar name on my roster. That was the day I met Darius. While it can be challenging to help transfer students get acclimated and caught up, it’s also a joy for me to get to know them. Some of my fondest memories come from students who arrived mid-year and found a good fit.

Commentary

7.17.2025

Governance, Private School Choice

The One Big Beautiful Bill could bankroll supplemental learning

Travis Pillow

Both supporters and detractors of a landmark education provision in the newly passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act have framed it, primarily, as a new funding stream to help families pay for private school.

Feet with arrows in different directions

Commentary

7.10.2025

Charter Schools, Governance, Personalized Learning, Private School Choice

Seizing educational dynamism

Stéphane Lavertu, Tim Rosenberger

American education is experiencing an historic shift. After more than a century of consolidation and standardization, a wave of pluralism is sweeping the country.

Commentary

6.12.2025

Private School Choice

Federal school choice skeptics are tilting at windmills

Shaka Mitchell

American education policy is littered with hypotheticals. If we allocated even more money, we could improve outcomes. If we found the latest ed-tech gadget, we could unlock individualized learning within a one-size-fits-all system.

Commentary

6.5.2025

Private School Choice

The supply side of private school choice programs

Jeff Murray

The nationwide push to create or expand private school access over the last few years—through vouchers, tax credits, or education savings accounts (ESAs)—has ignited parental curiosity in such choices. But has the supply side of the equation kept pace with that heightened demand (and opportunity)?

Commentary

5.29.2025

Accountability & Testing, Governance, Private School Choice

A Texas showdown: school choice vs. state testing

Dale Chu

Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently signed into law a universal education savings account program, breaking through years of legislative resistance.

Commentary

5.16.2025

Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Standards

No, Americans haven’t given up on children’s learning

Daniel Buck

Are Dana Goldstein and I watching the same state of education politics? She claims in the pages of the New York Times that, presently, “neither party, nor even a single major political figure,” wants to claim the mantle of education reformer.

Commentary

5.8.2025

Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Teaching in the age of school choice

Robert Pondiscio

On Tuesday, April 29, I gave the keynote presentation at an event titled “New Pathways for Teachers in the Age of School Choice,” hosted by the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Austin.

Commentary

5.8.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Dear Democrats, Republicans are eating your lunch on education. What are you going to do about it?

Rachel Canter

Early in my tenure at the education policy organization I founded, we barely had any money. No money meant no lobbyist, which left me, a complete stranger to the legislative process, to figure out how to pass meaningful policy.

Commentary

5.2.2025

Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Democrats’ choice on private school choice

Andrew J. Rotherham

Over the past few months, a quiet but intense debate has broken out among education-reform Democrats over whether the party should embrace private school choice—particularly the ESAs spreading kudzu-like across the country.

Commentary

4.30.2025

Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

SCOTUS should mandate state support for religious education, but not via charter schools

Michael J. Petrilli

The last two weeks of April featured a rare doubleheader at the Supreme Court, as the justices took up two cases dealing with the intersection of religious liberty and public education. The Court has a path that would respect the secular nature of public schooling while guaranteeing parents their right of free expression, and that is to declare that states must provide taxpayer support to religious schools.

Commentary

4.17.2025

Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Power plays in federal education: Three flashpoints, three branches

Dale Chu

Three emerging issues—each unfolding in a different branch of government—offer a telling snapshot of where federal education policy could be headed. They involve religious charter schools, tax-credit scholarships, and ESSA waivers. On their own, each represents a flashpoint. Taken together, they provide a rare glimpse into the full machinery of federal influence—and a timely reminder that education policymaking in Washington still matters.

Commentary

4.11.2025

School Finance, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Can the left deliver education abundance?

Danyela Souza Egorov

Ezra Klein’s new book has sparked an important discussion about how the left can provide more housing and transportation. However, one area that particularly needs self-reflection is education. The left has often obstructed the creation of new and innovative schools.

Commentary

4.10.2025

Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

A K–12 public school choice agenda for the Trump administration

Bruno V. Manno

The Trump administration’s K–12 education policy prescriptions typically focus on ways to provide financial support for private schools, including federal vouchers and tax-credit scholarships.

Commentary

3.27.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Governance, Private School Choice

Do education savings accounts increase the cost of private school tuition?

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Education savings accounts (ESAs) are taxpayer-funded spending accounts with differing eligibility requirements and usage guidelines depending on the state. Between the 2021–22 and 2022–23 school years, participation in them nearly tripled nationally, rising to roughly 489,000 total students.

Commentary

2.6.2025

Private School Choice

School choice programs: Testing mandates are more common than you think

Michael J. Petrilli

Opponents make lots of arguments against education savings accounts, tax-credit scholarship programs, and other forms of private school choice. But the complaint that schools aren’t required to test their students is generally false. We dig in and set the record straight

Commentary

1.26.2025

Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

The religious charter schools case is a bigger deal than you think

Michael J. Petrilli

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday afternoon to hear a landmark religious charter schools case out of Oklahoma, and it’s a much bigger deal than you might imagine.

Students raising their hands in a school classroom

Commentary

1.16.2025

Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice

Fault lines in the MAGA coalition and what they mean for education

Dale Chu

President-elect Donald Trump is about to return to Washington with a ragtag coalition, united in their rejection of the status quo. Yet this shared opposition has also led to a rash of infighting over a range of policy issues.

Commentary

1.14.2025

Governance, Private School Choice

Passing school choice legislation is likely the easiest part of creating new school choices for families and students

Terry Ryan

After more than a decade of trying to launch some form of education savings account/tax credit program for parent choice, it looks like Idaho’s legislature is likely to pass legislation this year to get it done.

Commentary

12.3.2024

Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

So you want to make education great again? 3 executive orders for Trump on day 1.

Jeanne Allen

The Founding Fathers never envisioned that executive orders would be a major policymaking tool, circumventing legislative and executive deliberations, political stalemates, and partisanship. But recent history has deemed them essential levers if there is to be urgent action on the most important matters of the day.

Commentary

11.7.2024

Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Governance, Private School Choice

How to ensure accountability in private-school choice programs

Michael J. Petrilli, Devon Nir

Yes, choice itself is a form of accountability, but “customer satisfaction” isn’t enough when tax dollars are in play—even for private-school choice programs. The public has a right to know that participating students are gaining essential skills. To that end, this post discusses four tiers of escalating accountability and where state policy should land, depending on the amount of taxpayer dollars provided to individual schools, among other considerations.

Commentary

11.7.2024

Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

Are the competitive effects of charter schools muted or magnified by private schools?

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

One of the most interesting and significant findings about charter schools in the last decade—outside of the fact that they tend to outperform traditional public schools (TPS)—is that growin

Commentary

10.10.2024

Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

Calling for a constitutional right to school choice in Colorado

Dale Chu

As the clock winds down towards Election Day, Colorado voters—myself included—face an important decision beyond the presidential contest: whether to amend the state constitution to enshrine a “right to school choice.” To be clear, the Centennial State has a long and proud record on the issue.

Commentary

9.26.2024

Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

The “à la carte education” accountability conundrum

Michael J. Petrilli, Devon Nir

Of the school choice options available to many U.S. families today, few embody the spirit of “power to the parents” quite like education savings accounts (ESAs).

Commentary

7.18.2024

Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

Vance vs. Pence: How Trump’s VP picks compare on education

Dale Chu

On Monday, Donald Trump chose Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, signaling a doubling down on his MAGA brand. As far as education is concerned, this means tapping into broad parental discontent over educational and education-related issues, many of which were turbocharged by the pandemic.

Commentary

6.20.2024

Governance, Private School Choice

Education navigators are an investment in social capital

Travis Pillow

Ten years ago, when Florida launched the nation’s second education savings account program, a beautiful thing happened. Friedrich Hayek would have called it “spontaneous order.” Parents, within days, began forming a multitude of Facebook groups where they traded advice on how to access the accounts, how to use them, and what learning options were available in their area.

Commentary

5.16.2024

Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice

How a parent movement could revolutionize education

Daniel Buck

In his new book, “The Parent Revolution,” school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis explains the notable plummet in the public’s trust of public education, especially in the past five years. By his telling, school choice is the answer to all that ails us. But he’s likely overselling its healing powers.

Commentary

4.4.2024

Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

School choice need not mean an expensive windfall for the rich

Michael J. Petrilli

The school choice movement continues to rack up dramatic wins nationwide. This growth in “educational freedom,” as many advocates now call it, is a fantastic development. But under the surface of these victories, an important debate is brewing: how to balance the drive for maximum choice with other values, including fiscal responsibility and fairness.

Commentary

3.22.2024

Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Students deserve better information about billions spent on education R & D

Dan Lips

Congress is currently considering legislation to update the way that the federal government funds education research and development.

Commentary

3.14.2024

Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

The “no excuses” model is due for a renaissance

Robert Pondiscio

Many of the conditions that led to the prominence of “no-excuses” charter schools a quarter-century ago have returned. For students, teachers, and parents who have never lost their appetite for safe and orderly schools, it can’t come soon enough.