Rhetoric vs. Reality : What We Know and What We Need to Know about School Vouchers and Charter Schools

Gill, Brian, Brewer, Dominic, Ross, Karen, Timpane, Michael, Booker, Kevin

ISBN 10: 0833027654 / ISBN 13: 9780833027658

Editore: RAND Corporation, The, 2001

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Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Rhetoric vs. Reality : What We Know and What We Need to Know about School Vouchers and Charter Schools
• Editore: RAND Corporation, The
• Data di pubblicazione: 2001
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0833027654
• ISBN 13: 9780833027658
• Rilegatura: Brossura
• Edizione: seconda edizione
• Condizione: Good
• Peso: 0,902 libbre

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Vouchers and charter schools aim to improve education by providing families with more choice in their children's schooling children and by decentralizing provision of educational services. This book reviews the theoretical foundations for vouchers and charter schools and presents new evidence of their effectiveness in academic achievement. It also examines outcomes in family choice, equitable access, racial/ethnic integration, and civic socialization. Recommendations are made for designing voucher and charter policies.

Product Description

How can public schools be improved? One radical solution that has been proposed is to provide parents with a voucher for a specified dollar amount for use at any public or private school (both religious and non-religious). Proponents argue that those children using the voucher would be able to attend more effective and efficient private schools, and that the loss of students (and revenue) to public schools would force them to respond by improving their programmes. Everyone would then be better off. In what has become a fiercely contentious and highly political debate opponents claim that moving to such a voucher system on a large scale would destroy public schools and exacerbate inequities in student outcomes by class and race/ethnicity. Both sides use research evidence from a small number of voucher experiments, and other sources, to bolster their claims. In this RAND Education book, the authors take a hard look at the evidence on vouchers in education. They consider what we know and what we would like to know more about: how vouchers would affect the academic achievement of participating and non-participating students, which students might use vouchers, who would supply and regulate schooling under a voucher system, and how much a voucher system would cost. After an exhaustive and critical review, the authors conclude that the evidence for many of the positions taken by either side in the debate is remarkably weak. For example, there is little rigorous empirical analysis that suggests public schools do any better job than private schools in promoting civic values or racial/ethnic integration, and that moving to a voucher system would have disastrous consequences. However, the evidence on the positive effects of vouchers on participating students is modest at best, and there is almost no grounded analysis of the key policy questions that policymakers need to consider before moving to a large-scale voucher experiment. This book should be a useful, unbiased primer f