Different Choices: A Public School Community’s Responses to School Choice Reforms

In the United States, state and federal reforms increasingly encourage the expansion of school choice policies. Debates about school choice contrast various concepts of freedom and equality with concerns about equity, justice, achievement, democratic accountability, profiting management organizations, and racial and class segregation. Arizona’s “market”-based school choice programs include over 600 charter schools, and the state’s open enrollment practices, public and private school tax credit allowances, and Empowerment Scholarships, (closely related to vouchers), flourish. This qualitative analysis explores one district-run public school and its surrounding community, and I discuss socio-political and cultural tensions related to school choice reforms that exist within the larger community. This community experienced school changes, including demographic shifts, lowered test scores, failed overrides, and the opening of high-profile charter school organizations near the school.

The rich get richer: Inequalities in public school tax credit donations to charter schools in Arizona

In Arizona, individuals can receive a tax credit of up to US$200 per individual taxpayer for donations to public schools. We analyze public school tax credit donations to charter schools and document inequalities in the distribution of donations associated with the percentages of more advantaged students charter schools serve. The differences in donations may be partially attributable to parents’ ability to invest in their children and the extent to which schools actively solicit donations. These dynamics suggest a Matthew effect of cumulative advantage among Arizona’s charter schools. We discuss our findings in relation to a legislative proposal to change the public school tax credit program, the current political environment in Arizona, and in the context of a more transformative social change.

LES DÉBATS SUR LE PARTAGE DE LA TAXE SCOLAIRE À MONTRÉAL

In 1869, the provincial government of P.-J.-O. Chauveau established a school tax in Montreal. This tax was deducted from land properties, and income was divided between the Catholic and Protestant school boards with regard to the landowners’ religion. Generally wealthier than the Catholics, Protestants were favoured by this mode of distribution of the school tax. This article attempts to explain the causes of the adoption and continuation of this mode of financing during more than a century by examining the major debates about the distribution of the school tax at the end of the 19th century. The study concludes that the continuation of this mode of financing is not devoid of ideological foundations strongly connected to the educational concept of the Catholic and Protestant elite and their respective visions of interethnic relations.* * La traduction du résumé est de Gabriel Saint-Jean, sous la supervision de sa professeure d’anglais, Diane Pigeon.

Generalized Exchange and Public Policy: An Illustration of Support for Public Schools

Generalized exchange, or indirect transfers in a univocal exchange system, is not researched widely but is common in situations involving public policies and not-for-profit organizations. Using survey data on support for a school tax, the author assesses the influences of perceptions of community benefits, organization performance, and social responsibility. The results partially support the utility of distinguishing between generalized and restricted exchange situations.

Determinants of the Compensation and Mobility of School Superintendents

Analyzing 1978–83 panel data from more than 700 New York State school districts, the authors find evidence that school superintendents were rewarded, both by higher salary increases and by enhanced opportunities to move to better-paying jobs, for having low school tax rates and high educational achievement within their districts, relative to the values of those variables in comparable school districts in the state. The rewards were, however, quite small. The analysis also suggests that the superintendents themselves did not significantly influence either school tax rates or educational test scores in their districts.