The District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act of 2003, passed by Congress in January 2004, established the first federally funded, private school voucher program in the United States. The purpose of the new scholarship program was to provide low-income parents, particularly those whose children attend schools identified for improvement or corrective action with "expanded opportunities to attend higher performing schools in the District of Columbia". Over 8,400 students have applied for what is now called the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), and rigorous evaluation of the Program, mandated by Congress, has been underway. This book describes the impacts of the Program at least four years after families who applied and were given the option to move from a public school to a participating private school of their choice.

Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.

This in-depth chronicle of 110 families in Washington, DC's Opportunity Scholarship Program provides a realistic look at how urban families experience the process of using school choice vouchers and transform from government clients to consumers of education and active citizens.

The relationship among the federal government, the states, and parents with regard to education is increasingly dysfunctional. Parental control over their children's education has gained impressive momentum in recent years at the state level. Meanwhile, states have been increasingly willing to relinquish sovereignty over education in exchange for more federal dollars. Failure would help bring clarity to these issues by examining whether students and the country better off after 30 years with the Department of Education and suggesting alternatives to an ever-expanding federal education bureaucracy. Part I would begin by examining the development of the current Department of Education, including the legislation that gave rise to it, and the pressure groups that have shaped it. Additional chapters would examine related issues including the arguments for and against the creation of a national education department, its origin, current structure, spending, and growth over time. Part II would examine the results to date against the education department's own standards. These include overall student achievement nationally before and after the advent of the Department of Education as well as international comparisons of U.S. student achievement. Outcomes of some of the largest Department of Education programs would also be considered in this section, along with some of the lesser-known department programs and initiatives. Part III would examine truly federal alternatives to the current tug-of-war between the national and state governments in light of the growing parental-choice movement. Included in this section would be chapters examining a strict-constitutionalist model, which denies any federal authority in education. Another alternative model examined would be the National Bureau of Education model, inspired by the original 1867 precursor to the current Department of Education, whose primary mission was to serve as a repository of information so schools nationwide could emulate best practices. In addition, this section would seek to include cross-country comparisons of education systems of top-performing Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

"The book sets the stage, with a discussion of the history of voucher battles, the legal dimensions, and the politics of policy change. -The book includes careful studies of the basic structure of contemporary private schooling, of the crucial Southern history of vouchers, and of the key federal court decisions that have opened the door to the explosion of state legislation described earlier. -Finally, the book includes profiles of voucher policies in two of the states that have made the largest efforts to support vouchers, as well as the only nationally funded program in the nation's capital. -Chapter authors are national experts who have produced seminal work in the field. Researchers (particularly school-choice researchers), people engaged in policy making (particularly around school choice), school administrators, and teachers"--