In 1999, the Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF) announced that it would award scholarships enabling low-income families across the United States to send their children in grades K-8 to the private school of their choice. The families of over 1.25 million children applied for scholarships; 40,000 were awarded. Because more families applied than could receive scholarships, recipients were chosen by lottery, enabling the research methodology of a randomized field trial to evaluate the program.
Choice
School Choice Experiments in Urban Education. IN Margaret C. Wang and Herbert J. Walberg, Eds.. School Choice or Best Systems: What Improves Education?. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2001.
Choice in American Education. In Terry Moe, Ed.. A Primer on America’s Schools. Hoover Institution Press. 2001.
Impacts on School Vouchers on Students and Families. In John C. Goodman and Fritz F. Steiger, Eds.. An Education Agenda: Let Parents Choose Their Children’s School. National Center for Policy Analysis. 2001.
An Evaluation of the Basic Fund Scholarship Program in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. . PEPG 01-01. 2001.
In 1998, the Bay Area Scholarships for Inner-city Children (BASIC) Fund was created to give low-income families scholarships to attend registered private schools in Marin, San Francisco, or San Mateo County. This evaluation presents the results of a survey of BASIC Fund scholarship parents and students who moved from public schools to private schools.
Choice and Competition in K-12 Education. In Joseph Nye and Jack Donahue, Eds.. Government amid Bigger, Better Markets. Brookings Institution Press. 2001.
School Choice in New York City After Two Years: An Evaluation of the School Choice Scholarships Program. . PEPG 00-17. 2000.
Test-Score Effect of School Vouchers in Dayton, Ohio, New York City, and Washington, D. C.: Evidence of Randomized Field Trials. . PEPG 00-16. 2000.
In the late 1990s, three privately-funded school voucher programs for students from low-income families were established in the Dayton, Ohio metropolitan area, New York City, and Washington, D. C. The New York City program, sponsored by the School Choice Scholarships Foundation (SCSF), was announced in the fall of 1996; students receiving vouchers entered private schools in the fall of 1997. Two additional programs were created one year later, one in the Dayton metropolitan area, sponsored by Parents Advancing Choice in Education (PACE), and one in D.
What Happens to Low-Income New York Students When They Move From Public to Private Schools. In Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti, Eds.. City Schools: Lessons from New York. John Hopkins University Press. 2000.
School Choice in Washington D.C.: An Evaluation After One Year. . PEPG 00-08. 2000.
In the fall of 1997 the Washington Scholarship Fund announced the expansion of a previously establishment, privately-funded school voucher program in Washington, D.C originally established in 1993. In the spring of 1998, over six thousand students from public and private schools applied to the new program; of these initial applicants, over one thousand were offered scholarships.
School Choice in Dayton, Ohio: An Evaluation After One Year. . PEPG 00-07. 2000.
In early 1998 the Parents Advancing Choice in Education (PACE ) program offered low-income families an opportunity to win scholarships to send their children to private schools in Dayton and other parts of Montgomery County, Ohio. Students entering kindergarten through twelfth grade qualified. PACE offered scholarships to 515 students who were in public schools and 250 students who were already enrolled in private schools. The program began in September of 1998. This evaluation examines the program’s impact on those students in grades 2-8 who had previously been attending public schools.
Vouchers and Central-City Schools. In Christopher H. Foreman, Jr., Ed.. The African American Predicament. Brookings Institution Press, 82-96. 1999.
Building the Case: What Evaluation Has to Say About School Choice. In Evaluating for Success. The Philanthropy Roundtable, 37-55. 1999.
Evaluation of the Horizon Scholarship Program in the Edgewood Independent School District, San Antonio, Texas: The First Year. . PEPG 99-03. 1999.
In the past decade much more has become known about the impacts of school vouchers on low-income families and their children. Ten years ago, the information available came primarily from an experimental public-school choice program attempted in Alum Rock, California during the 1960s But beginning in 1990 data were collected on voucher programs in many cities, including Milwaukee, Cleveland, Indianapolis, San Antonio, New York City, Washington, and Dayton, Ohio. Initially, many of these studies were limited by the quality of the data or the research procedures employed.
Evaluation of the Cleveland Voucher Program After Two Years. . PEPG 99-02. 1999.
In 1996 the Cleveland Scholarship Program (CSP) provided scholarships to 1,996 students in grades kindergarten through grade three who came from low-income families. Students could use these scholarships at any participating Cleveland private school, secular or religious. The program continued into the 1996-97 and 1997-98 school years. Approximately 3,000 students participated in the program in its second year and 3,674 students in the third year. This evaluation reports the results from a survey undertaken during the summer and fall of 1998.