Latest Release

The Effects of Universal School Vouchers on Private School Tuition and Enrollment: A National Analysis

September 11, 2025 | By Douglas N. Harris, Gabriel Olivier

A new study by REACH researchers finds that school voucher programs in states across the country have so far raised private school enrollment by only about 3%, but the modest gains mask bigger shifts ahead, including rising tuition and benefits flowing mainly to higher-income families and small, religious schools.

View Technical Report

How Has Centralized Enrollment Affected New Orleans Schools?

December 07, 2023 | By Jane Arnold Lincove, Jon Valant

This report examines what happened when schools that had enrolled a highly disproportionate share of the system's white students entered the city's centralized enrollment system. It finds that the schools entering that system (OneApp/NCAP) led to increased access to those schools for Black and other nonwhite families.

View Policy Brief View Technical Report

Setting Priorities in School Choice Enrollment Systems: Who Benefits from Placement Algorithm Preferences?

December 07, 2023 | By Jon Valant, Brigham Walker

This report looks closer at who benefits from the priority categories that are one part of centralized enrollment systems. For example, students with siblings or who live close to a school have a better chance of getting in. The researchers explored whether these categories favored students of certain races or socioeconomic classes. “ Even though the algorithm does not consider race when Black and white applicants requested the same schools as their first choice, white students were more likely to get a seat because they were more likely to have a geographic preference or a sibling in those schools,” said Jon Valant, the report’s lead author. “It’s important to recognize that these priorities are defined through a policy process–and work to ensure that the priorities align with the community’s values.”

View Policy Brief View Technical Report

How Should the Government Regulate Charter Schools? State Policy Patterns and Causal Effects

November 01, 2023 | By Douglas N. Harris, Roy McKenzie

This brief describes how charter regulation varies across states, it shows how the regulations are related to charter school outcomes, and provides evidence of their policy effects.

View Policy Brief View Technical Report

Choice in a Time of COVID: Immediate Enrollment Decisions in New York City and Detroit

July 26, 2023 | By Sarah Cordes, Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Jeremy Singer, Samantha Trajkovski

New research offers some of the first evidence of COVID-19’s impact on student mobility.

View Policy Brief View Technical Report

A Year That Forced Change: Examining How Schools and School Systems Adapted to the Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Calls for Racial Justice in 2020

July 18, 2023 | By Huriya Jabbar, Taylor Enoch-Stevens, Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Julie A. Marsh, Eupha Jeanne Daramola, Jacob Alonso, Jeremy Singer, Chanteliese Watson, Laura Mulfinger, Kait Ogden, Dwuana Bradley, Annie Hemphill, Sheneka Williams, Kate Kennedy

These two reports explore how educational institutions and their systems responded to two sudden disruptions, the COVID-19 pandemic and increased awareness of racial inequity. We compared responses from traditional, charter, voucher-receiving private schools and rural and urban districts.

View Policy Brief

Online Reviews Are Leading Indicators of Changes in K-12 School Attributes

May 28, 2023 | By Linsen Li, Aron Culotta, Douglas N. Harris, Nicholas Mattei

In this paper, we investigate to what extent the language used in online reviews of a school is predictive of changes in the attributes of that school, such as its socio-economic makeup and student test scores.

View Technical Report

Virtual Charter Students Have Worse Labor Market Outcomes as Young Adults

May 24, 2023 | By Paul Y. Yoo, Thurston Domina, Andrew McEachin, Leah Clark, Hannah Hertenstein, Andrew Penner

Virtual charter schools are increasingly popular, yet there is no research on the long-term outcomes of virtual charter students. We link statewide education records from Oregon with earnings information from IRS records housed at the U.S. Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter students fare as young adults.

View Technical Report

COVER How Authorizers Shape Equity 2023 01 10

How Charter Authorizers Shape Equity: A Cross-State Analysis of Charter Applications

January 10, 2023 | By Katrina Bulkley, Amanda Lu, Kate Meza Fernandez, Alica Gerry

This study examines the role of authorizers in advancing equity-focused charter schools.

View Policy Brief View Technical Report

School Choice and Competition for Teachers: Evidence from Michigan

December 20, 2022 | By Kaitlin P. Anderson

This study from Kaitlin P. Anderson examines how competition from school choice relates to the distribution of teacher characteristics across school contexts in Michigan.

View Technical Report