Full Description
This authoritative book examines the long-standing campaign that resulted in today's school voucher policies. Advocates of private school vouchers promulgated a vision of service to low-income families, students of color, and other marginalized student populations. Vouchers were sold as a way to advance civil rights. But as voucher policies grew in size and became an element of Republican orthodoxy, they evolved into subsidies for a broad swath of advantaged families, with minimal antidiscrimination protections. The approach also transmuted into forms like education savings account programs and vouchers funded through tax-credited donations. In this book, scholars and national experts untangle this complex story to show how law and policy have aligned to dramatically alter the likely future of American schooling. They offer recommendations for modifying current policies with the goal of capturing more of the originally stated vision of voucher programs—equitable access to quality schooling, protection of all students' civil rights, and advancement of the wider societal goals of a democratic educational system.
Book Features:
Shows how a fast-growing policy is transforming education in the United States in ways that are very different from how that policy was sold to the public.
Sets the stage with a discussion of the history and legal dimensions of voucher battles, as well as the politics of policy change.
Examines the basic structure of contemporary private schooling, the Southern history of vouchers, and the key federal court decisions that have opened the door to an explosion of state legislation.
Offers profiles of voucher policies in two states that have made the largest efforts to support vouchers, as well as the only nationally funded program in the nation's capital.
Edited by three scholars with extensive experience in the study of school choice, with chapters by national experts who have produced seminal work in the field.
Contents
Contents (Tentative)
1. Introduction: Voucher Expansion and the Abandonment of Equity
Kevin G. Welner, Gary Orfield, and Luis A. Huerta2. The Segregationist Origins and Legacy of Today's Private School Vouchers
Steve Suitts3. Private School Vouchers: Legal Challenges and Civil Rights Protections
Kevin G. Welner and Preston C. Green4. Voucher Expansion and the Threat to Students' Educational and Civil Rights
Derek W. Black5. Vouchers as a Mechanism for State-Sanctioned Private Discrimination
Julie F. Mead and Suzanne E. Eckes6. Evolving Voucher Policies: Broadening Eligibility Through Rules & Schools
Luis A. Huerta and Steven Koutsavlis7. Bait and Switch: How Voucher Advocates Shift Policy Objectives
Christopher Lubienski, T. Jameson Brewer, and Joel R. Malin8. Educational Privatization in Congress From Reagan to Biden: An Ideology Unfulfilled
Elizabeth H. DeBray and Ann E. Blankenship-Knox9. School Vouchers in Indiana: Policy Shifts and Their Implications for Economically Disadvantaged Families and Students of Color
Mark Berends, R. Joseph Waddington, and Megan Austin10. A Voucher by Any Other Name: Empowerment Scholarship Accounts and the Future of School Choice
David R. Garcia and Makayla Steele11. Washington, D.C. Voucher Program: Civil Rights Implications
Mary Levy12. Private Sector Schools: Limited Scope & Stratification
Jongyeon Ee, Gary Orfield, and Jennifer Teitell13. Conclusion: Can Vouchers Be Reshaped to Accomplish Their Initial Rhetorical Goals?
Kevin G. Welner, Gary Orfield, and Luis A. HuertaEndnotes
Index
About the Editors and Authors
