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School Choice blog
A Thought Experiment on Grocery Stores Assigned by ZIP Code A labelled satire: assign each family one grocery store by address and call complaints an attack on public food, then see what that says about assigned schools. Your First Year of Homeschooling, a Practical Playbook for Parents A step-by-step plan for the first year: find your state's legal category, withdraw properly, pick a curriculum, keep records, test and plan for transcripts. Microschools Are the One-Room Schoolhouse Reborn, With Modern Rules Small multi-age schools taught most Americans for generations. Microschools revive the model, and zoning, fire codes and licensing are the obstacles. School Choice Fails Rural Kids? Here Is the Rural Objection Answered Rural families have no private school nearby, say critics. Education savings accounts, course access and microschools answer the objection on its own terms. Polly Williams, the Milwaukee Democrat Who Started the Voucher Movement The first modern voucher program came from a Black Democrat in the Wisconsin legislature who wanted poor families to have what rich ones had. Her story. Seven Myths About Homeschooled Kids, From Socialization to College Seven stock objections to homeschooling, tested against the legal and documentary record, and why they keep coming back anyway. Homeschooling Went From Legal Gray Zone to Legal in Fifty States by 1993 In the 1970s a homeschooling parent could be prosecuted for truancy. By 1993 every state recognized the right, thanks to ordinary families, not Washington. Milton Friedman's 1955 Voucher Essay and Its Seventy-Year Road A 1955 essay split who pays for schooling from who runs the schools, and almost every school choice program since descends from that one distinction. The Charter School Lottery Studies and What They Show About Cities Admission lotteries let researchers compare winners and losers like a trial, and urban charters did well where freedom came with accountability. Your ZIP Code Picks Your Child's School, the Case for Open Enrollment Attendance zones let housing prices ration good schools, and open enrollment opens the door to families who cannot afford the house. Tax-Credit Scholarships, the Choice Program Built on Private Donations A tax-credit scholarship moves no appropriated money, which is why it survived lawsuits that sank other choice programs, and Congress has now copied it. Arizona Made Every Child Eligible for an ESA, How the Idea Spread So Fast Education savings accounts began as a narrow Arizona program for children with disabilities, went universal in about a decade, and spread to other states. Espinoza v. Montana and the Blaine Amendments Against Religious Schools Espinoza (2020) held Montana could not exclude religious schools from a scholarship program for being religious. The 1870s history behind the ban matters. The 1922 Oregon Law That Tried to Abolish Private Schools, and Lost Pierce v. Society of Sisters struck down Oregon's 1922 ban on private schooling, and its logic still protects a parent's right to direct a child's upbringing.