The issue brief entitled "Connecticut's Charter School Law & Race to the Top" by the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN) recommends changes to the state's charter school law that it argues would improve funding equity and are essential to closing the state's achievement gaps. The brief's specific proposals deserve careful attention, particularly its recommendation to tie charter school funding levels to student needs. The brief, however, offers no evidence for the claim that expanding charter schools would raise the achievement of low-income students, and it presents one-sided arguments for its policy positions that ignore important considerations. The brief does not provide the thoughtful discussion of the state’s educational goals and how charter schools might further these goals needed to improve charter school policy.

Suggested Cite:

Bifulco, R. (2010). Review of "Connecticut’s Charter School Law & Race to the Top!" Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved [date] from http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-Connecticut-Charter

"Expanding Choice in Elementary and Secondary Education: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education" presents a seemingly egalitarian prescription for the federal government to expand school choice. An examination of the arguments and evidence for increasing choice, however, reveals at least three important shortcomings. First, the authors tend to overuse research that is still in progress and research produced by advocacy organizations and think tanks, leading them to be overly optimistic about particular school choice reforms’ effects on educational achievement, access and equity. The second oversight is the neglect of important scholarship, causing the authors to fail to acknowledge the complex social and political dynamics informing parental choice processes as well as choice schools’ practices that limit and shape their student enrollments. A third shortcoming emerges from this omission: the authors do not sufficiently consider issues of diversity, including the social categories of race, ethnicity, special education, and English Learners. They fail to acknowledge that some school choice reforms have had segregative effects. As such, in the singular pursuit of their goal to universally expand school choice the authors miss an opportunity to affirm the federal role in ensuring the creation of diverse, equitable, and high-quality choice schools that would produce individual and societal benefits.

Suggested Cite:

Scott, J. (2010). Review of "Expanding Choice in Elementary and Secondary Education: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education," Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved [date] from http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-expanding-choice

The South Carolina Policy Council Education Foundation report, "How School Choice Can Create Jobs for South Carolina," argues that school choice, in the form of vouchers to attend private schools, would create significant job opportunities in five poor, rural counties of South Carolina. The report, however, relies almost exclusively on results of an earlier study that has significant limitations in its methodology and execution, rendering its findings unreliable. The report also introduces questionable assumptions while extrapolating these findings to the five focus counties -- assumptions that drive the outcomes but are unlikely to hold in practice. As a result of its uncritical acceptance of an earlier flawed study and in its introduction of additional untenable assumptions, the report offers findings that are unlikely to be valid and is of little use in informing policymakers and the public about the effects of vouchers.

Suggested Cite:

Roy, J. (2010). Review of “How School Choice Can Create Jobs for South Carolina.” Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Re-search Unit. Retrieved [date] from http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/Review-How-School-Choice