Research & Data

Breaking Down “Earning Full Credit”

Indiana is a national leader in school choice. Hoosier policymakers deserve credit for adopting innovative policies that help families enroll their children in the schools that work best for them. In addition to the nearly 30,000 students who received school vouchers last year, more than 11,000 students used tax-credit scholarships to attend schools of choice, […]

School Choice Could Alleviate Worry from New Population Trend

In 2030, the population of people dependent upon our most expensive tax-funded services—education and senior healthcare—likely will be the highest it’s ever been in American history.  Those increases in population will occur for a couple reasons: 1. Baby Boomers are retiring, and 2. The K-12 student population will continue to grow, exceeding that of the […]

Breaking Down “The Achievement Checkup”

The Achievement Checkup

More than 40 years ago, Stevie Wonder sang a plea for impoverished city kids in his hit “Living for the City,” in which he called for the larger community to work for a better day for those kids.  The plight of America’s low-income, urban children has been well-documented, through films, such asWaiting for Superman and […]

Top Seven Findings from Our Minnesota School Choice, K–12 Education Survey

What voters say about Minnesota school choice, K–12 education

Minnesota voters like public schools and private school choice policies. Minnesota has a long history of bucking conventional thinking about K–12 education. Most important, the state is known for implementing policies that enhance the flexibility of families to send their children to the schools that fit them best, whether public or private. In 1955, Minnesota […]

Are School Voucher Studies Biased from Front to Back?

Are school voucher studies biased?

Determining if a policy actually causes some impact on people’s lives is an incredibly difficult task.  Humans are complex creatures, and the world that we live in has lots and lots of interconnected moving parts. It is a challenge to see how altering one small part of it, say by offering a student a voucher, […]

Six Survey Snapshots of Nevada’s Education Landscape

Learn about Nevada's education landscape

At the start of the year, an internal “poll” among staff at the Friedman Foundation named Nevada the state most likely to succeed in creating its first school choice program. In fact, a bill that would create a tax-credit scholarship program is making its way through the state legislature right now. But what does Nevada’s […]

A New Look at Data from the Nation’s Largest School Choice Program

School vouchers in Indiana

Indiana’s statewide school choice program is either incredibly controversial or wildly popular, depending on with whom one speaks. To the former, vouchers only help the rich. And sometimes with the latter, it is suggested only families in “poor-performing” public schools use the freedom to choose in education. Thankfully, facts exist to respond to such opinions. This […]

America’s School Choice Programs Ranked By Purchasing Power

America's School Choice Programs

We’ve helped our readers see how many families are eligible for school choice programs across the country and those who actually participate. Until now, the question still remained: Which programs realistically give families the financial ability to choose something other than their zoned public school? Read on for the final installment in our series of […]

America’s School Choice Programs Ranked by Eligibility

School Choice Program Eligibility

Universal eligibility—that is, open to every single family—is the Friedman Foundation’s school choice policy goal. To coincide with the 2015 release of The ABCs of School Choice, we’ve ranked the America’s school choice programs by how close they get to our vision of 100 percent eligibility. Importantly, as the participation rankings showed, just because a […]