Abstract
History was made on January 29, 2004, when President George W. Bush signed the District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act of 2003.1 The law established the first federally funded private school choice program in the United States. A total of 2,454 students in over 1,500 families received what came to be called Opportunity Scholarships through t he program in 2004 and 2005, which allowed them to enroll in the participating private school of their choosing. Through a series of focus groups, in-depth interviews, and real-time opinion polling, we followed 110 of the families in the program, documenting their joys, struggles, setbacks, and triumphs as participants in a pioneering parental school choice program. This is their story.
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Notes
Linda Darling-Hammond, The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (New York: Teachers College Press, 2010), 4;
Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need—and What We Can Do About It (New York: Basic Books, 2010).
Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006).
Frederick Hess, The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday’s Ideas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010);
Charles Payne, So Much Reform, So Little Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Publishing Group 2008);
Gaston Alonso, Noel Anderson, Celina Su, and Jeanne Theoharis, Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education (New York: New York University Press, 2009).
Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters, “Leaving Boys Behind: Public High School Graduation Rates,” Manhattan Institute for Policy Research CR no. 48 (2006), http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_48.htm.
Jody Heymann, Forgotten Families: Ending the Growing Crisis Confronting Children and Working Parents in the Global Economy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Charlotte Rosenzweig, “A Meta-analysis of Parenting and School Success: The Role of Parents in Promoting Students’ Academic Performance” (presentation, Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA, 2001).
Thomas Stewart, Juanita Lucas-McLean, Laura I. Jensen, Christina Fetzko, Bonnie Ho, and Sylvia Segovia, “Family Voices on Parental School Choice in Milwaukee: What Can We Learn From Low-Income Families? Milwaukee Evaluation Report 19,” School Choice Demonstration Project at University of Arkansas, April 2010, 4, http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/SCDP/Milwaukee_Eval/Report_19.pdf.
Patrick J. Wolf, “School Voucher Programs: What the Research Says About Parental School Choice,” Brigham Young University Law Review, 2008(2), 417.
Terry M. Moe, Schools, Vouchers and the American Public (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002).
See for example E. Vance Randall and Bruce Cooper, “Parent Triggers, Parental Choice, and Educational Reform” (presentation, Inaugural International School Choice and Reform Academic Conference, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, January 14–17, 2012).
David Garrison, Marni Allen, Margery Turner, Jennifer Comey, Barika Williams, Elizabeth Guernsey, Mary Filardo, Nancy Huvendick, and Ping Sung. “Planning for Quality Schools: Meeting the Needs of District Families,” DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education with Brookings Urban Institute 21st Century Schools Fund, March 2008, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2008/4/24%20dc%20schools%20garrison/0424_dc_schools_garrison.
William G. Howell and Paul E. Peterson, with Patrick J. Wolf and David E. Campbell, The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2002);
John F. Witte, The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America’s First Voucher Program (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
See for example Patrick Wolf, Babette Gutmann, Michael Puma, Brian Kisida, Lou Rizzo, Nada Eissa, and Matthew Carr, “Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Final Report,” National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education, 2010, http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104018/pdf/20104018.pdf.
Helen Ingram and Anne Schneider, “The Social Construction of Target Populations: Implication for Politics and Policy,” American Political Science Review 87, no. 2 (June 1993): 334–47;
Joe Soss, “Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and Political Action,” The American Political Science Review 93, no. 2 (June 1999): 363–81.
Joe Soss, “Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and Political Action,” The American Political Science Review 93, no. 2 (June 1999): 363–81.
See especially Patrick J. Wolf, Brian Kisida, Babette Gutmann, Michael Puma, Nada Eissa, and Lou Rizzo, “School Vouchers and Student Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from Washington, DC,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 32(2), April 2013: 246–70.
Ben Levin, How to Change 5000 Schools: A Practical and Positive Approach for Leading Change at Every Level (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Publishing Group 2008), 2.
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© 2014 Thomas Stewart and Patrick J. Wolf
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Stewart, T., Wolf, P.J. (2014). Introduction: The School Choice Journey: School Vouchers and the Empowerment of Urban Families. In: The School Choice Journey. Education Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137442666_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137442666_1
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