Taking Stock of Private-School Choice – by Patrick J. Wolf

In the past few years, four states have established programs that provide public financial support to students who choose to attend a private school. These programs—a tax-credit-funded scholarship initiative in Florida and voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio—offer a glimpse of what expansive statewide choice might look like. What have we learned about the students and schools who choose to participate in these programs? What academic outcomes have students reaped? And what does research tell us about how states should design and oversee voucher programs—if indeed they should do so at all?

In this forum, we hear from Patrick J. Wolf, education policy professor at the University of Arkansas, Douglas N. Harris, professor of economics at Tulane, and the trio of Mark Berends, professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, R. Joseph Waddington, assistant professor at the College of Education, University of Kentucky, and Megan Austin, researcher at the American Institutes for Research, Chicago.