Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the most promising systemic educational reform plan involves school choice, a school system that allows parents to select which school their children attend, thus giving parents the freedom to move their children out of ineffective schools while at the same time motivating the ineffective schools to improve. The author stresses that the government should only open the school choice program to families who 1) demonstrate economic need and 2) whose children would be assigned to an inadequate public school. The paper states that an effective educational system based on choice must include religious schools among the choice options.

Table of Contents
The Significance of Education
School Reform Efforts
School Finance Reform
Reform Plans Involving Forms of School Choice
Inter-district Transfer Plans and Controlled Choice
School Choice Systems in Milwaukee and Cleveland
Barriers to Choice-based Education Reform
Legal Obstacles to School Choice
A Pyrrhic Desegregation Policy
Political Barriers to School Reform
Conclusion: Constructing a Feasible School Choice System
Overcoming Legal Barriers
Religious "Choice" Schools
Designing a School Choice System
Targeted Participation
Maximum Number of Available Options
Funding School Choice
The Choice Process
Evaluating a School Choice System

From the Paper:

"Ironically, reform efforts to ensure equal educational opportunity have faced opposition from interests pursuing a strict desegregation enforcement policy. Some of these proponents of a strict desegregation policy have confused the means with the ends in providing for equal education through the desegregation doctrine established in Brown. The reasoning by the Court in "Brown" implied that the purpose of integration was to ensure that racial minorities received an equal educational opportunity: "We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?" This implies that equal "tangible" factors are necessary elements of an equal educational opportunity."

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