How Legislation and Litigation Shape School Choice

Since its appearance on the educational landscape, school choice has engendered considerable controversy. Those controversies are captured in two forms of "law" -- legislation and litigation. Government legislation at all levels codifies the results of political struggles around school choice and defines choices available to parents. Those unhappy with the results have brought litigation to determine whether the policies are consistent with constitutional provisions and other existing laws. This policy brief examines the relationships between various forms of school choice and the legal authority that both binds and bounds them. As the discussion will show, both the development of and legal challenges to school choice in its various forms can be traced to a tension between the legal principle that parents should be able to direct the upbringing of their children and the legal principle of parens patriae (the government is the ultimate guardian), which forms the foundation for compulsory education in the United States. As such, school choice legislation and litigation go to the very heart of public education and the societal values it reflect

Conscious Use of Race as a Voluntary Means to Educational Ends in Elementary and Secondary Education: A Legal Argument Derived From Recent Judicial Decisions

This paper provides an in-depth examination of the ten recent court decisions concerning race-based student selection processes. As these cases will illustrate, school districts face increasing demands to justify any race-conscious selection process. The significance of meeting the demands and the implications for what appears to be an evolving legal theory is national in scope and broad in application. Some have even argued that some of these cases mark a departure away from the Court\u27s thinking in Brown v. the Board of Education. It should also be noted that each of the cases mentioned above occurred in the context of some form of school choice, which heightens the significance of the research and the implications of its findings

NEPC Review: Why the Gap? Special Education and New York City Charter Schools

This report attempts to shed light on the lower enrollment rates of children with disabilities in charter schools in New York City. It concludes that distinct differences in enrollment patterns can be largely attributed to lower application rates and not active measures by charter school officials to push out or &ldquo;counsel out&rdquo; students with special needs. While the report raises interesting issues about application and transfer patterns, it ultimately fails to provide useful results to inform policymakers. It neglects any review of related literature and therefore ignores alternate explanations for the statistical patterns found. Use of a restricted, non-representative data set places severe limitations on the generalizability of the findings and the conclusions that may be drawn. The report asserts but does not provide evidence that &ldquo;counseling out&rdquo; is minimal or does not occur, nor does it answer &ldquo;why&rdquo; disparities persist. The results do confirm the existence of enrollment disparities between charter and traditional public schools and growth in these disparities over time, and the report draws attention to the need to better understand the influences on parents&rsquo; decisions to apply to a charter school or not. The report also provides evidence that further research is necessary and suggests the need to employ student-level data, to track lottery applicants, and to employ a variety of research methods to ascertain both the precise contours of the &ldquo;gap&rdquo; and why it occurs in charter schools in New York City.</p