Poster Paper: Public Rules on Private Schools: Measuring the Regulatory Impact of State Statutes and School Choice Programs

Saturday, November 8, 2014
Ballroom B (Convention Center)

*Names in bold indicate Presenter

Andrew D. Catt, The Friedman Foundation
Policymakers, school choice advocates, education media, and school choice researchers need to know the types of changes made to private school regulations since school choice legislation was enacted, why the changes occurred, whether they have increased, decreased, or stayed the same, and how any changes impact schools. This longitudinal study looks at changes for each program since before inception to present, as measured by legislative records, with various periods for each jurisdiction. It focuses on 23 school voucher, tax-credit scholarship, and education savings account programs and looks at whether these regulatory changes apply to only choice schools, the number of private school regulation changes made, and the types of private school regulation changes per type of school choice program. As this is a longitudinal study, the author investigated various time periods for each jurisdiction. For example, the author looked at changes to private school regulations in Milwaukee over the last 24 years, Arizona over the last 17 years, Florida over the past 15 years, etc. The author used state and local government sources to establish a benchmark of private school regulations in each respective state/area by looking at said regulations in the year immediately before the year in which the first enacted school choice legislation in the respective states/areas. The author tracked how these regulations have changed over time from the benchmark year to 2013 in each state/area. The author then created a profile of the historical and current private school accountability context, framework, and implementation issues for each school choice program and provides policymakers with a potential guidebook for designing accountability in future school choice programs. The following list is comprised of the applicable states/areas, with the baseline years in parentheses: Arizona (1996); Florida (1998); Georgia (2006); Indiana (2008); Iowa (2005); Louisiana (2007); Ohio (1994); Oklahoma (2009); Pennsylvania (2000); Rhode Island (2005); Utah (2004); and Wisconsin (1989). The author explores: (1) to what extent these regulatory changes apply to only choice schools, as opposed to all private schools, (2) how many of these regulatory changes exist on average for the applicable school choice programs, (3) what types of these regulatory changes are made for each type of school choice program, (4) whether private school regulations have overall increased, decreased, or stayed the same since school choice legislation was enacted in each jurisdiction, and (5) to what extent the changes impact private schools. The longitudinal study also explores challenges and unintended consequences surrounding private accountability requirements for the aforementioned school choice programs. To the author’s knowledge, this is the most comprehensive longitudinal study of the complete history of private school regulations in school choice states/areas.