June 1997 Executive Summary From 1992 to 1996, the Center for the Study of Education Reform at the University of North Texas evaluated both a private and a public school choice program in San Antonio, Texas. The researchers supplemented survey information from these groups with surveys of teachers, interviews with school administrators, field observations at nine representative schools, and reviews of archival records. Grants from the U.S. Department of Education and private foundations funded the research. Relative to nonchoosing parents, choosing parents are more educated, wealthier, more involved in their children's education at home and at school, and hold higher educational expectations for their children's education. They also have fewer children.
Children applying to choice programs have higher standardized test scores than nonchoosing students.
This difference is largely a factor of program design. Private school choosers also are more religious and more educated but have lower incomes than public choosers. These differences are caused in part by the design of the choice programs. Parents of children who used the CEO scholarship to move from a public to a private school were more involved in their child's education prior to the move to a choice school than were public choosing parents. However, participation in choice program does not increase parental involvement.