Executive Summary

For more than a half-century, national policymakers have established federal education laws and programs aimed to promote equal opportunity in American K-12 education. Congress enacted laws to assist children at risk of being denied equal access to a high-quality education. Intended beneficiaries of these federal initiatives include children from low-income families, children with disabilities, American Indian and Alaska Native children, migrant children, bilingual children, and English language learners, foster children, and the homeless. These federal laws and programs authorized federal funding to states and localities to support public education services.

The federal government only provides 8.5 percent of the funding for K-12 public education, leaving the majority of the responsibility to state and local governments. Nevertheless, national policymakers have been clear: The policy of the United States is to promote equal opportunity for all children to access a high-quality education.

In some respects, the United States has nearly achieved equality in K-12 public education for poor and non-poor children, at least in terms of key school inputs. Today, the average per-student revenue in high-poverty schools is only $500 (or 3.5 percent) less than the average amount at low-poverty schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education. High-poverty districts receive more funding than low-poverty districts in a majority of the states. (This is due in part to federal funding programs and financial support aimed to benefit high-poverty schools.) Children from low-income and high-income families generally have a similar chance of having an effective public-school teacher, though meaningful differences in access to high-quality teachers do exist in some districts.¹ Disadvantaged children, on average, are taught by slightly less effective instructors than their peers. In all, the average low-income child who finished high school in 2019 will have had more than $146,000 invested in her prekindergarten and K-12 education, according to a conservative estimate of national per-child education spending from 2002 to 2019.

Yet a review of student achievement data and other outcome measures reveals that large achievement gaps persist in American K-12 education. Additionally, outcome measures indicate that many low-income children do not master basic skills. For example, 40 percent of low-income 8th grade students scored “below basic” in reading the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Many factors affect students’ academic achievement, including family background and corresponding life experiences. National data and empirical evidence show that significant education opportunity gaps also persist in American education, including whether students have the opportunity to attend a school of their parents’ choice. Important educational and opportunity gaps also exist in students’ educational experiences outside of school.

The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity’s mission is to research and consider the impact of public policies and proposed reforms on the economically disadvantaged and to promote equal opportunity. Reviewing the state of equal opportunity in American K-12 education shows the traditional approach to establishing fairness in American K-12 education — working to create a uniform, high-quality public-school system — has been unsuccessful in giving students the foundational skills they need to have an equal opportunity for future success. New approaches and policy reforms must be considered to make progress toward achieving the national goal of equal opportunity in K-12 education.

Background on the National Policy to Promote Equal Opportunity in K-12 Education

In 1965, Congress enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (“ESEA”), a law that was intended to “strengthen and improve educational quality and educational opportunities in the Nation’s elementary and secondary schools.” ESEA established that Congress,

“…declares it to be the policy of the United States to provide financial assistance… to local educational agencies serving areas with concentrations of children from low-income families to expand and improve their educational programs and means (including preschool programs) which contribute particularly to meeting special educational needs of educationally deprived children.”

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the legislation, stating that it represented the federal government’s new commitment to equality and high-quality quality schooling. He predicted the law would usher in “a new day of greatness in American education.”

ESEA was the first in a series of federal compensatory-education programs enacted attempting to establish equal opportunity in American education by providing funding assistance to state and local education agencies to improve public education services for certain student groups. Table 1 presents a historical timeline of major federal compensatory-education legislation and other initiatives focused on promoting equal opportunity. Assisting disadvantaged student groups to promote equal opportunity has been a consistent focus of federal K-12 education policy for more than a half century.

Following ESEA, the Johnson administration established Head Start to provide preschool and child care services to assist disadvantaged children and to improve school readiness. During the following decade, Congress passed laws aimed to protect populations of students and provide funding assistance to states and localities for public education to serve specific student groups, including bilingual students, American Indians and Alaska Natives, and children with disabilities. In the 1980s and 1990s, Congress established new laws to improve educational opportunities for migrant children, homeless children, and foster children.

In 1989, nearly a quarter-century had passed since ESEA when President George H.W. Bush convened a conference with the nation’s governors, including Governor Bill Clinton, in Charlottesville, Virginia. A bipartisan agreement grew out of the summit for future standards-based education reforms aimed to improve all students’ achievement by lifting the overall quality of public schools by aligning instruction with state standards. The Clinton Administration backed the bipartisan Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994, which tied federal funding for disadvantaged and other student groups to state standards and school reform requirements. The standards-based federal school reform movement reached its peak with the passage of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (“NCLB”). The law increased funding and authorization levels for ESEA programs, while requiring states to test students on state-standards, disaggregate scores, and measure and demonstrate adequate-yearly-progress gains toward the goal that all student groups scored “proficient” by 2014. Certain schools that did not make sufficient annual progress were required to implement school improvement measures over time, such as offering students the choice to attend a different public school, tutoring (or “supplemental educational services”), and ultimately school restructuring.

The Obama Administration’s approach to federal K-12 education-reform involved spending increases, federal incentives and waivers to encourage particular Administration-backed reforms, and ultimately a bipartisan legislative agreement to relax some federal requirements. First, the administration championed significantly increasing federal funding for public education institutions and programs, including through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Obama administration also used waivers and federal funding incentives, through its “Race to the Top” initiative, to encourage states to adopt certain education policies, such as adopting common academic standards, measuring teacher effectiveness, and expanding public charter school options. President Obama ultimately signed the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (“ESSA”), the latest reauthorization of ESEA, which relaxed the NCLB standards-based school reform requirements, shifting responsibility for holding schools accountable for results back to the states.

The federal government provides just 8.5 percent of the revenue for public elementary and secondary schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Therefore, the impact of federal policy is necessarily limited compared to the authorities and decisions of state and local policymakers, as well as school leaders. The main effect of federal laws and funding has been to establish rights for certain students, such as children with disabilities, and to supplement state and local resources to support education services for disadvantaged children and other student groups. Yet more than a half century of federal action also demonstrates a national and bipartisan consensus in support of the ideal of equal opportunity — that all children deserve a chance to receive a high-quality education in the United States.

Assessing the State of Equal Opportunity in K-12 Public Education for Low-Income Children

Defining Equal Opportunity

To what extent does equal opportunity exist in American elementary and secondary education? Answering this question requires defining the term equal opportunity, a project that is worthy of a graduate-level seminar in moral and political philosophy. For the purpose of this review, a brief discussion of some of the philosophical approaches to defining equal opportunity provides valuable context.

In his book A Theory on Justice (1971), John Rawls developed an analytical framework to evaluate whether a society is just and fair. Rawls created a hypothetical thought experiment called an “original position,” where one must consider how he would prefer to structure a fair society through a “veil of ignorance,” or not knowing one’s place, social position, or fortune in the distribution of natural talents in that society. Based on this analysis, a fair and just society would distribute benefits in a manner that would maximize the opportunity for the least advantaged. This theory influenced modern thinking about egalitarianism — or school of thought that believes people are equal and deserve equal opportunities — was particularly influential in shaping modern liberalism.

In his recent book Bottlenecks: A New Theory of Equal Opportunity (2014), Joseph Fishkin presented another lens for how to view equal opportunity, based on the conception of “opportunity pluralism,”

“Opening up a broader range of opportunities to everyone is not the same thing as making opportunities equal. But opportunity pluralism is a conception of “equal opportunity” in the broad sense in which the phrase is ordinarily used in political discourse and in some philosophical writing.”

Fishkin argues that past approaches to distributive justice have treated opportunity as a zero-sum game, and that instead we should be working to promote human flourishing:

“Opportunity pluralism aims to open up a wider range of life paths and opportunities not only to those who demonstrate particular merit, desert, or promise, but to everyone — including those who have done poorly and those who did not manage to do as much as one would hope with the opportunities made available to them… Instead of taking the structure of opportunities as essentially given and focusing on questions of how to prepare and select individuals for the slots within that structure in a fair way, in ways large and small, to open up a broader range of paths that allow people to pursue the activities and goals that add up to a flourishing life.”

In my opinion, many Americans would agree that equal opportunity entails a combination of Rawls’ and Fishkin’s philosophical approaches. Indeed, both are consistent with the general framework of national policy intended to promote equal opportunity in K-12 education, likely reflecting that consensus view. Federal and state policy should be structured to ensure that every child has an equal chance to receive a high-quality K-12 public education. Moreover, national and state education policies should aim to give all children the opportunity to reach their potential and pursue happiness, including by broadening the opportunities available to all children to pursue specific interests and talents.

The long tradition of federal compensatory education policy, dating back to 1965, is aimed to improve the educational opportunities of the least-advantaged, to use Rawls’s term. The most recent reauthorization of ESEA and the Title I program to assist disadvantaged children scopes the program’s purpose in a way that is consistent with opportunity pluralism: “to provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close achievement gaps.”

Therefore, evaluating the state of equal opportunity in K-12 education in 2019 based on the philosophical frameworks of Rawlsian egalitarianism and Fishkin’s opportunity pluralism requires answering several questions:

1. What does the United States invest in public education and is that investment fair and equitable?

2. Are economically disadvantaged students’ receiving a “high-quality education” based on academic achievement metrics and other outcome measures?

3. What other differences affect children’s educational opportunities?

Answering these questions will help us assess our progress to achieve our national policy of establishing equal opportunities. It will also help us begin to identify potential areas of focus for future research and public policy reforms to expand equal opportunity.

As discussed above, federal compensatory-education programs were established to benefit many different populations of children at-risk of not receiving a high-quality education. The following discussion focuses on opportunity gaps between poor and non-poor students, which is a basic barometer for examining equal opportunity in American K-12 education and the focus of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In future research, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity will examine whether equal opportunities are afforded to other student groups, including those identified by federal compensatory-education programs.

U.S. Public Education Investments or Inputs

Equity and Fairness in School Funding for Low-Income Children. Ensuring that all children have access to a school with sufficient resources to provide a high-quality education has been a focus of federal efforts to increase access to equal opportunity. Equity in school finance varies based on state and local funding formulas. The Education Trust, a non-profit organization that “works to close opportunity gaps that disproportionately affect students of color and students from low-income families”, publishes an annual report examining school funding gaps in the United States. In 2018, The Education Trust found that “school districts serving the largest populations of Black, Latino, or American Indian students receive roughly $1,800, or 13 percent, less per student in state and local funding than those serving the fewest students of color.” Further, the Education Trust reported:

“For school districts serving the largest populations of students from low income families, the gap is smaller but no less significant. Across the country, the U.S. spends approximately 7 percent — or $1,000 — less per pupil on students educated in our nation’s highest poverty districts than those educated in the wealthiest.”

However, The Education Trust’s analysis excludes federal funding, since it is “intended — and targeted — to provide supplemental services to such specific groups of students as those in poverty, English learners, and students with disabilities.”

When federal funding is included, the government revenue gap between high-poverty and low-poverty school systems narrows. Table 2 presents data from a 2019 National Center for Education Statistics report showing total revenues per-pupil by type of school district based on poverty quartile. The revenue gap between high-poverty and low-poverty school districts is less than $500. In a majority of the states, high-poverty school districts actually have more per-pupil revenue than low-poverty districts. Moreover, the high-middle poverty quartile revenue average is more than $700 more than low-poverty districts.

In 2015, the Washington Post published an analysis of similar Department of Education data from 2012. The Post reported that federal funding “is serving as an equalizer,” and that “[w]hen federal funds are included, just five states are spending less in their poorest districts than their wealthiest. Nationwide, the average disparity drops from 15 percent to less than 2 percent.”

Some argue that the significant funding gaps remain, based on the view that low-income children require more funding assistance to educate than non-poor children and that the purpose of federal funding was not equalization. Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan made this point in the aforementioned Washington Post article: “The point of that [federal] money was to supplement, recognizing that poor children and English language learners and students with disabilities come to school with additional challenges. This is about trying to get additional resources to children and communities who everyone knows need additional help.”

Nevertheless, the overall picture on per-student funding indicates that similar resources are now available to children at an average school district with higher-percentages of poverty. In fact, more overall funding resources are available in these school districts than in the average school districts serving high-middle and low-middle poverty students. In the future, the public will have a greater understanding into per-school and per-student funding estimates, due to new transparency and reporting requirements under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which mandates that districts report public school level spending data.

Public School Class Sizes and Other School Resources and Inputs. Other metrics of school inputs show that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds attend public schools that have similar resources or inputs as the public schools that children from higher-socioeconomic backgrounds attend.

• Student-Teacher Class Size Ratios: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average pupil to teacher ratio is approximately the same — 16 to 1 — for public schools that enroll a high- or low-population of students who are eligible for the free and reduced school lunch program.
• School Building Age and Quality: NCES reports only minor differences² in the age and quality of school buildings based on the percentage of students who are eligible for the national school lunch program (which serves children from low-income families), with 4 percent of schools serving higher populations of low-income students rated as poor compared to 2 percent of schools serving fewer than 35 percent of low-income students.
• Access to Technology and Technology Instruction: NCES data show that schools serving high populations of poor students have nearly the same student to instructional computer ratio (3 to 1) as schools that serve non-poor children. NCES further reports that nearly all schools have internet access, though schools with larger populations of low-income students are more likely to have teachers with less training on the integration of technology into instruction.

While some differences remain in the funding and inputs available to schools that serve low-income students, the United States has largely equalized funding levels. No longer are “savage inequalities” in funding levels or resources, as described in Jonathan Kozol’s influential 1991 book, to blame for unequal opportunity in American schools.

Equity and Fairness in Public School Teacher Quality and Effectiveness. Policymakers have tried to enact policies aimed to improve teacher quality and increase teacher effectiveness, such as establishing teacher licensing and certification requirements and greater job security for teachers with more years of experience. However, predicting teacher effectiveness based on characteristics has proven to be ineffective. The non-partisan RAND Corporation discussed the challenge of identifying effective teachers: “Despite common perceptions, effective teachers cannot reliably be identified based on where they went to school, whether they’re licensed, or (after the first few years) how long they’ve taught.” Instead, RAND Corporation explains, “[t]he best way to assess teachers’ effectiveness is to look at their on-the-job performance, including what they do in the classroom and how much progress their students make on achievement tests.”

Research evidence shows that the opportunity to learn from a highly effective teacher can yield short-term and long-term benefits. For example, Stanford University scholar Eric Hanushek examined test score data measured by value-added assessments and reported that the difference for a student between having a high-quality teacher and a low-quality teacher is the net gain of an additional grade-level compared to the student with the bad teacher.³ Hanushek explained that providing a student with the opportunity to learn from a high-quality teachers could close achievement gaps over time:

“Moving from an average teacher to one at the eighty-fourth percentile of teacher quality (i.e., moving up one standard deviation in teacher quality) would close somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the average gap in math achievement between kids eligible for free and reduced-price lunches and those with higher incomes. Said differently, having a good teacher as opposed to an average teacher for three to four years in a row would, by available estimates, close the achievement gap by income. Closing the black-white achievement gap, which is a little larger than the average income gap, would take good teachers three and a half to five years in a row.”

Researchers Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff assessed the long-term impact of teacher effectiveness on student outcomes in adulthood, based on a review of 2.5 million students’ data from grades 3 through 8 and adult outcomes (including tax records). They reported that:

“Students assigned to high-VA [value added] teachers are more likely to attend college, attend higher-ranked colleges, earn higher salaries, live in higher SES neighborhoods, and save more for retirement. They are also less likely to have children as teenagers. Teachers have large impacts in all grades from 4 to 8. On average, a one standard deviation improvement in teacher VA in a single grade raises earnings by about 1% at age 28. Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5% with an average teacher would increase the present value of students’ lifetime income by more than $250,000 for the average classroom in our sample.”

Both in the short- and long-run, having a great teacher can have a significant positive impact on a child’s life.

Based on the above evidence and the persistence of socioeconomic achievement gaps in American k-12 schools, one might suspect that low-income students are significantly less likely to have the opportunity to learn from a highly effective teacher. However, the U.S. Department of Education studied whether low-income students have equal access to effective teachers in 2016, based on evidence from 26 school districts. The Department of Education reported that children from low-income and high-income families had access to similarly effective teachers and an equal chance at having either or great or bad teacher.⁴ The Department of Education researchers did identify some meaningful areas of inequality: “In a few study districts, differences between teachers of high- and low-income students are large enough to meaningfully contribute to the student achievement gap.” Specifically, the researchers characterized meaningful inequity if eliminating inequity for five consecutive years would reduce the achievement gap by 4 percent. The researchers reported that meaningful inequity existed in math teaching in 3 of 26 school districts studied.

A 2014 U.S. Department of Education summary of three peer-reviewed empirical studies that together examined 17 states, identified two lessons⁵: “(1) on average, disadvantaged students received less effective teaching than other students, equivalent to about four weeks of learning for reading and two weeks for math, or about 2 to 4 percent of the student achievement gap between these groups; and (2) access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students varied across districts, with a statistically significant difference between more and less disadvantaged students’ access in some districts and no statistically significant difference in access in others.”⁶

This empirical evidence suggests that poor and nonpoor children generally have a similar chance of having access to a highly effective public school teacher, even though some inequality exists in certain some districts and nationally. Given the strong research evidence showing the short- and long-term positive effects of effective teachers, improving access to high-quality teachers is a worthy objective of policy reforms to enhance equal opportunity to a high-quality education.

Total Taxpayer Investment on Public Education Programs Per-Child. Another way to evaluate government investment in educational opportunities for the disadvantage is to examine total funding allocated per-student for preschool, elementary and secondary education programs. Table 3 presents an overview of the per-child funding spent on the average economically disadvantaged student’s preschool and K-12 schooling for the graduating high school class of 2019. This includes annual government funding for preschool and K-12 per-student expenditures based on high- and low-estimates.

For example, the high estimate assumes that the disadvantaged child benefited from federal subsidies for child care, beginning at birth, as well as two years of the federal Head Start program. The low-estimate assumes that the average poor child did not benefit from government-subsidized federal child care programs but did enroll in a state-funded preschool program for one year.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average per-student spending for the children enrolled in public schools in the fall of 2018 was $12,430. (Utah spent the least, or $7,296 per student, and D.C. spent the most, $22,009, as of the 2015–16 school year, according to NCES.) The table includes a discussion and explanation of the assumptions to support the funding estimates. For the high school class of 2019, or those born in 2002, the average child had at least $146,000 spent on her preschool and K-12 education, based on a conservative estimate, though assuming that she enrolled in state-funded preschool for at least one year. The total funding investment could be as high as $176,000 or more if she participated in publicly funded preschool and child care programs, including Head Start, since birth and attend a school with the national average per-student funding.

Comparing United States spending per-student with other countries provides additional context about the nation’s investment in public education. US. Department of Education data show that per-student spending in the United States is higher than average per-child spending in most other developed countries. According to the National Center on Education Statistics, per-student spending in the United States was 12,800 in 2015, or 35 percent higher than the $9,500 average per-pupil expenditure by Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) countries. Only Norway spent more per-pupil than the United States. American children, including children attending high-poverty schools, have more tax dollars invested in their public education than most children around the world.

Findings

The United States has generally succeeded in establishing basic fairness in the resources or inputs available for public education for poor and nonpoor students, suggesting that inputs alone are not a key cause of ongoing inequality in American education. Public school funding across the country is nearly equalized between school districts serving high and low populations of children from families in poverty when federal funds are considered. Poor children were in fact more likely to attend schools with higher per-pupil funding that non-poor children in 41 states as of 2011–2012. Other school inputs, including class sizes and access to technology, are also nearly the same for poor and nonpoor students. In general, students have access to similarly effective school teachers, though there are school districts where inequality exists which contributes to differences in students’ learning opportunities.

Students’ Academic Achievement and Attainment

After examining equity in public school investments and other inputs, a second way that policymakers have traditionally tried to assess equal opportunity in American schools is by studying outcome measures and metrics of students’ cognitive abilities, academic achievement, and educational attainment, and by evaluating identifying achievement gaps.

A review of outcome measures and learning levels reported by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics reveals an achievement gap between economically disadvantaged children and their peers that exists as early as Age 2 and continues through students’ high school years. Researchers Eric C. Hanushek, Paul Peterson, Laura M. Talpey and Ludger Woessmann recently reviewed a half century of data for Education Next and found that “gaps in achievement between the haves and have-nots are mostly unchanged over the past half century.” Moreover, a review of metrics and outcome measures, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress and other data collected by NCES, show that many students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds do not even attain basic levels of educational achievement.

Cognitive Levels During Pre-Kindergarten Years. The NCES 2017 Digest of Education Statistics presents available federal data and outcome measures of the skills of young children, collected as part of the federal Early Childhood Learning Study. A sample of infants’ measured abilities in specific cognitive and motor skills at 9 months in 2001–02 shows little difference in children’s abilities at that age, based on the children’s socioeconomic background. However, by about age 2 and age 4, the average child from lower socioeconomic backgrounds scored lower than their peers from middle- and upper-income families in measures of cognitive skills, such as early counting, matching discrimination, listening comprehension, and expressive and receptive vocabulary, as Figure 1 and Figure 2 show.

Elementary School

The National Center for Education Statistics also presents data showing the achievement levels of young children from kindergarten through 4th grade from 2011 to 2015. Children from the lowest income quintile have lower reading scores than children from middle-income or the highest quintile of family income, as Figure 3 demonstrates.

Fourth grade reading and math test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) present an important indicator of students’ academic achievement near the end of elementary school. By this time, an average child who is on grade-level should be reading. Table 4 shows 4th grade achievement levels for low-income and non-low-income students, based on eligibility for the national free and reduced school lunch (NSLP) program, on the 2019 NAEP. 47 percent of low-income 4th graders scored “below basic” in reading. 29 percent of low-income 4th grade students scored “below basic” in mathematics.

Middle School

The 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress reports shows the current achievement gaps between students who are eligible for the national free and reduced school lunch program by 8th grade and their non-poor peers. 40 percent of low-income 8th grade students scored “below basic” in reading and 46 percent scored “below basic” in mathematics, as shown in Table 5.¹⁷ This means that nearly half of all low-income students are not achieving “basic” levels in reading and math by the end of middle school.⁸

High School

The 12th grade NAEP measures students’ academic achievement at the end of the child’s K-12 years, disaggregated by certain factors including students’ family background characteristics including mother’s level of education attainment. (The NAEP did not report students’ achievement levels by socioeconomic background. However, reduced levels of educational attainment, which is linked with lower earnings potential, and, therefore, serves as an approximate indicator of poverty.) The 2015 NAEP data show that students whose parents did not graduate high school had lower levels of achievement than children whose parents had higher levels of educational attainment. The 2015 NAEP also found that, among 12th grader students whose parents did not finish high school, 45 percent scored below basic. NCES also reported a 4-year high school graduation rates for the class of 2015–16 and found that lower-income children, children with disabilities, and those learning the English language were less likely to graduate high school.

Summary

National measures of students’ cognitive levels, academic achievement, and educational attainment show that poor and nonpoor children enter school with different skills, and that the socioeconomic academic achievement gap persist throughout K-12 education. The average disadvantaged child is less likely to master basic skills in elementary and middle school. Measures of students’ academic achievement and educational attainment at the end of high school, show that economically disadvantaged children are less likely to master basic skills or graduate from high school. This overall picture suggests that American public schools are not causing inequality — which exists before children enroll in kindergarten. But the K-12 public school system is also not closing the achievement gap, nor is it or affording a high-quality opportunity to all children either or ensuring that most disadvantaged children are prepared to succeed in adulthood.

Other Differences in Children’s Educational Experiences

Assessing the state of equal opportunity in American education also requires examining other aspects of children’s educational experiences. For example, a review of the available data shows differences in key factors that affect a child’s education, such as whether they attend a school of their parents’ choice, the level of safety in their school, absenteeism, and out-of-school educational experiences.

School Choice

One way that the educational experiences of children from poor and non-poor households differ is in the area of school choice. Children from non-poor families are more likely to attend a school of their parents’ choice than children poor- or near-poor families, including by moving to a neighborhood for a public school or by enrolling in a private school, as Table 7 and Table 8 show. Children from poor- and near-poor families are more likely to attend an assigned public school.

In some states and localities, policymakers have established policies to allow for greater parental choice in education. These options include choice within the public school system (such as open enrollment, public school choice, public charter schools, online learning) and government-facilitated private school choice options (including scholarships or vouchers, education tax credits or deductions, education savings accounts, and tax credit scholarships). According to EdChoice, a nonpartisan advocacy organization that supports choice in education, “more than half of the states offer educational choice options.”

Private school choice programs have been the focus of rigorous academic evaluations, including randomized experiments, to study the effect of the opportunity to participate in a choice program on student achievement. In 2016, academic researchers Anna J. Egalite and Patrick J. Wolf reviewed the empirical research on private school choice programs and found:

“evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students — particularly in the area of educational attainment — and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.”

Paul DiPerna, Vice President of Research and Innovation at EdChoice, summarized the ‘generally positive’ empirical research findings about private school choice programs in Education Next:

“Summaries of the effects of multiple programs generally show positive effects, as does a meta-analysis of gold-standard experimental research school choice by Shakeel, Anderson, and Wolf (2016). Participating students usually show modest improvement in reading or math test scores, or both. Annual gains are relatively small but cumulative over time. High school graduation and college attendance rates are substantially higher for participating minority students compared to peers. Programs are almost always associated with improved test scores in affected public schools. They also save money. Those savings can be used to increase per-pupil spending in local school districts. Studies also consistently show that programs increase parental satisfaction, racial integration and civic outcomes.”

DiPerna highlighted a consistent finding that merits particular attention when analyzing the extent to which equal opportunity exists in American schools: Parents report higher levels of satisfaction about their children’s school when they can choose their children’s school.¹⁸ Federal survey data further substantiates this finding. Table 9 presents the results of NCES survey data from 2016, showing higher levels of parents reporting to be “very satisfied” with their children’s school and aspects about the school when their children attend private schools or a chosen public school.

Surveys of parents participating in private school choice programs revealed that perceptions of school’s safety are key factors in their decision to choose their child’s school. For example, Patrick Stewart and Patrick Wolf summarized the findings of focus groups of parents participating in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program: “Safety is parents’ first priority. Once they are confident that their child is in a safe school, parents shift their attention to the academic rigor and curricular offerings of the school. This was made evident in focus groups, where parents were very explicit that safety came first for their child and only then did they seek to satisfy their child’s higher-order needs.”

School Safety

Children attending schools with a larger percentage of low-income children have a greater exposure to incidents of crime and violence than students who attend schools with smaller population of poor students. Table 10 presents public school crime rate data from the 2015–16 school year by schools’ socioeconomic population. For example, the rate of violent incidents occurring at high-poverty schools is 37-to-1 compared to 125-to-1 at a low-poverty school. Table 11 shows federal data of school victimization of public-school students ages 12 through 18. Children from the poorest families, earning less than $15,000, had the highest rates of victimization of theft and violent incidents. The National Center for Education Statistics that public schools with the highest percentages of poor students had higher rates of school bullying.¹⁹ These schools were also more likely to take at least one serious disciplinary action than public schools with lesser percentages of poor children.²⁰ Children from lower income families are also more likely to have been suspended than their more affluent peers.²¹

Absenteeism

Poor children have higher rates of absenteeism than non-poor children. Child Trends, a non-profit research organization focused on improving children’s lives, examined NAEP data and reported that children eligible for the national school lunch program were more likely to have missed three or more days in the past month, when surveyed: “In 2017, 28 percent of fourth graders and 25 percent of eighth graders who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch were chronically absent, compared to 20 percent of fourth graders and 19 percent of eighth graders who were not eligible.” Researchers with Johns Hopkins University reported that public schools with higher percentage populations of low-income children had higher rates of chronic absenteeism, or missing 15 or more school days. NCES reports that low-income students with higher rates of absenteeism had lower reading and math test scores.

Summary

National statistics about students’ educational experiences show important differences for poor and nonpoor children. On average, poor families are less able to decide where their children attend school, either by choosing where they live or by paying for private school. Therefore, national data show that poor children are more likely to attend an assigned-public school. Empirical studies of programs that give families the ability to choose private schools have been found to benefit students, particularly with educational attainment. National survey data and surveys of school choice programs find that parents generally report higher levels of satisfaction about their children’s school when they have a choice. National data also show that poor children attend schools with higher rates of criminal incidents, including violence, and are more likely to be victimized in school. These are areas of significant inequality in American K-12 education that affect poor children’s opportunity to learn.

Outside-of-School Educational Experiences and Extracurricular Activities

NCES data about out-of-school education-related experiences highlight other differences in the opportunities provided to children from lower-income families and their peers. Table 12 shows that children from nonpoor families are more likely to engage in reading activities, such as being read to by a family member, visiting a library, or reading 3 or more hours, than disadvantaged children. Children from non-poor families are more likely to have used a computer before kindergarten than poor children. High school seniors from poor families are more likely to spend three or more hours per day watching television than their non-poor peers. The non-poor are more likely to have a home broadband subscription than the non-poor.

In some ways, the out-of-school experiences are similar for all children, according to survey data. As of 2009, children averaged about five hours of homework per week. The vast majority of parents check their children’s homework, though poor parents had slightly higher rates of diligence. While policymakers should be cautious about drawing conclusions from self-reporting, the national data show that families at least report a strong interest in and dedication to their children’s learning at home.

Note: The NCES data presents socioeconomic status in multiple ways, including “poor or non-poor,” income-level, below or above the poverty threshold, or by eligibility for the school lunch program. For simplicity in presentation, the table generalizes these categories into poor and non-poor. See footnotes for specific labels for each indicator.

Enrichment Experiences

Tables 13 and 14 highlight differences in children’s experiences outside of school. Table 13 shows that children from families with higher incomes had higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities, including athletics, arts, volunteer work, religious instruction, associations, and employment. Table 14 presents reported summer activities for children after kindergarten for poor, near-poor, and non-poor families. While children from poor families are more likely to do writing or math activities every day, children from near-poor or non-poor families have higher rates of participation in many other experiences. Children from families with greater financial means are more likely to visit state or national parks, museums, plays or concerts, historical sites, and zoos or aquariums.

This data highlights a key difference in the educational experiences of poor and non-poor children. The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution reports that a large spending gap on enrichment activities exists: families from the highest income quintile spend nearly $9,000 annually per child on enrichment, compared to about $1,300 spent by families from low-income families (from the lowest quintile in family income).

Enrichment expenditures and out-of-school learning experiences may have a significant effect on students’ academic achievement and the opportunity to succeed in K-12 education. For example, researchers have identified the “summer learning slide,” as one of the factors that contributes to disadvantaged children’s lower academic achievement and the achievement gap. RAND Corporation researchers reviewed the academic evidence related to the effect of summer vacation on students’ learning and found:

“On average, all students lose skills, particularly in mathematics. However, summer learning loss disproportionately affects low-income students, particularly in reading. While their higher-income peers, on average, post gains in reading, low-income students show losses at the end of the summer. Most disturbing is that it appears that summer learning loss is cumulative and that, over time, these periods of differential learning rates between low-income and higher-income students contributes substantially to the achievement gap. It may be that efforts to close the achievement gap during the school year alone will be unsuccessful.”

Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas studied the effect of a school field trip to a museum on students, using a random assignment experiment, and identified positive effects in factors beyond traditional measures of academic achievement: Greene and his coauthors reported: “Disadvantaged students assigned by lottery to receive a school tour of an art museum make exceptionally large gains in critical thinking, historical empathy, tolerance, and becoming art consumers.”

Family Characteristics and Differences in Education Outcomes

Differences in students’ family structure also affect their learning opportunities and outcomes. Academic achievement and attainment data show that children from one-parent families perform at lower levels than children from two-parent families. Potential factors that may contribute to these differences include disparities in financial resources, time spent with adults, and potential partnership instability.

Ludger Woessmann, a professor of economics at the University of Munich, reviewed international educational achievement data and found that U.S. children from single-parent households scored approximately one-grade level behind children from two-parent families on the international PISA test. After adjusting for other background characteristics, such as socioeconomic status, the achievement gap between children from one- and two-parent families narrows by approximately one half.

Similar differences exist in students’ educational attainment outcomes. Researchers Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, Greg J. Duncan, and Ariel Kalil examined educational attainment data and found that children who lived in one-parent homes during the years from ages 14 to 16 completed less school and were less likely to complete college than children from two-parent families. Long-term data show that the gap between educational completion rates between these two groups widened between 1978 and 2008.

Summary

National data about children’s outside of school educational experiences and extracurricular activities reveal significant differences in poor and nonpoor children’s lives outside of school. While families from different socioeconomic backgrounds report similar dedication to their children’s learning, in terms of learning activities at home, low-income children are less likely to benefit from a range of educational experiences or participate in extracurricular activities during their childhood. One factor that affects these differences is economic resources with non-poor families spending significantly more on their children’s enrichment than non-poor families. In addition, differences in family background, including whether children are raised in one- or two-parent homes, also affect children’s learning outcomes.

Does Equal Opportunity Exist in American K-12 Education?

By either the Rawlsian or Fishkin standards discussed above for evaluating equal opportunity, the United States has not achieved equal opportunity in K-12 education, in spite of making enormous efforts to do so.

National policies, including more than fifty years of federal intervention, have succeeded in achieving general fairness in the funding and other school resource inputs available to poor and nonpoor students alike. Moreover, the United States taxpayers spend more than $146,000 on the average child’s preschool and K-12 public education, and U.S. average public school spending outpaces most developed countries.

Yet an American still child does not have an equal chance to receive a high-quality education regardless of his or her socioeconomic standing in life, judging by measures of students’ academic achievement and educational attainment. Moreover, the United States has not achieved the goals of “opportunity pluralism,” offering all children diverse opportunities to flourish and reach their potential, regardless of their circumstances. In part, this is driven by the reality that schools themselves are only one factor in the total education and experience of any child.

Findings

A review of the state of equal opportunity in American K-12 education the following findings:

1. The longstanding and bipartisan policy of the U.S. federal government is to promote equal opportunity in K-12 education. For more than a half-century, Congress and Democratic and Republican Presidents have enacted laws with the stated purpose to increase access to equal opportunity for all children in elementary and secondary education. The focus of these laws has been to assist children at-risk of not receiving a high-quality education, including children from low-income families, children with disabilities, American Indian and Alaska Native children, migrant children, bilingual children and English language learners, foster children, and the homeless. While the federal government’s responsibilities for and funding of K-12 education remains limited, the national policy is to promote equal opportunity.
2. The United States has made significant progress in equalizing school inputs, including funding, available to poor and non-poor children. Per-pupil funding levels for low-income children and their affluent peers are similar, due in part to federal funding’s compensatory support to address past inequities in funding. Low-income students will attend or be assigned to public schools that have similar classes sizes and teachers, when compared to their non-poor peers, though some inequity in access to higher-quality teachers remains. Access to other in-school resource inputs, including technology and school buildings, is not unequal.
3. The average low-income child finishing high school in 2019 will have at least $146,000 spent on his or her preschool and K-12 education by taxpayers, based on a conservative estimate. In 2019, the average disadvantaged child will have had between $146,000 and $176,000 invested in her pre-k and k-12 education by taxpayers by the end of high school, according to a calculation of annual per-child funding for preschool and K-12 education from 2002 to 2019.
4. Measures of students’ academic achievement and educational attainment show that an achievement gap between poor and non-poor students still exists, and that many low-income children do not master even basic skills. Differences in cognitive abilities and achievement levels are evident by elementary school and persist through high school. This gap has largely been unchanged since the 1960s. More importantly, the average child from a lower-income family is less likely to pass even basic levels of academic achievement measures, and she also trails her nonpoor peers in measures of attainment such as high-school graduation.
5. Significant differences in the schooling opportunities afforded to poor and nonpoor children remain, including whether or not the child has the opportunity to attend a school of their parents’ choice. A child from a family with greater means is more likely to have the opportunity to attend a school of their parents’ choice and these parents therefore are more likely to be satisfied with their child’s school. Affluent families have a greater ability to choose where they live and, thus, choose their neighborhood-assigned public school. They are also more likely to pay tuition to enroll their child in private school. Low-income families are more likely to enroll their children in assigned public schools without even exercising location-based choice. Children from lower-income families are more likely to be exposed to violence and criminal activity at school.
6. Children from non-poor families are likely to benefit from a range of outside-of-school educational experiences, which contributes to the gap in children’s overall educational opportunities. Outside of school, poor and nonpoor children experience different educational opportunities, with non-poor children having a greater likelihood to benefit from a range of extracurricular and non-school educational activities, ranging from the frequency of being read to during childhood to greater exposure to national parks, museums, theaters, and other cultural activities. Differences in families’ resources contribute to this gap.
7. Family background characteristics, and other human capital differences, affect students’ learning opportunities and outcomes. Differences in students’ family background structure also affect their learning opportunities and outcomes. Academic achievement and attainment data show that children from one-parent families perform at lower levels than children from two-parent families.

The Challenge for Policymakers and Future Research Opportunities

For more than a half century, the U.S. lawmakers have established policies aimed to promote equal opportunities for all children through K-12 public education. Through federal and state policies, the underlying strategy of American K-12 education has been to support a public-school system that would afford all children at least a basic opportunity to learn. Federal and state policies have provided relatively equal access to resources, in terms of per-student school funding and other inputs. The average low-income student in the United States will have well more than $100,000 spent on his or her education through high school.

This approach has not worked in achieving equal opportunity or significant access to high-quality schooling, judging by disadvantaged students’ test scores and educational attainment. Achievement gaps between the poor and nonpoor persist. More importantly, an alarming percentage of low-income children do not even master basic skills despite the considerable investment on their behalf.

Reviewing the state of equal opportunity in American K-12 education shows the traditional approach to establishing fairness in American K-12 education — working to create a uniform, high-quality public-school system — has been unsuccessful in giving students the foundational skills they need to have an equal opportunity for future success. This is in part due to the large role that out-of-school learning experiences appear to have in shaping children’s lives.

The mission of the Foundation on Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP) is to conduct original research and propose reforms to expand economic opportunity to those who least have it. The purpose of this report is to review the state of equal opportunity in the United States today, and to begin to diagnose areas of inequity. The goal of future FREOPP research will be to develop recommendations for a policy agenda to expand opportunity in K-12 education for those who least have it. The following areas present opportunities for future research and policy development to improve equal opportunity for the disadvantaged and other at-risk student groups:

• Examining the state of equal opportunity for other populations of students. As discussed earlier in this report, researching the effectiveness of other compensatory-education programs and the opportunities afforded to other populations of disadvantaged students is critical to understanding equal opportunity in the United States. These populations include children with disabilities, American Indian and Alaska Native children, migrant children, bilingual children and English language learners, foster children, and the homeless. Future research should identify and propose reforms to benefit these student groups.
• Improving early childhood education. Measures of students’ cognitive learning upon entering kindergarten show that achievement gaps start before K-12 schooling, and existing or new efforts to improve early childhood education should be studied to identify ways to improve equal opportunity, such as by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of federal and state preschool programs, including Head Start.
• Examining equity in students’ public school resources and how funds are used (including reviewing the forthcoming school-specific per-student funding data required by federal law). While the national data show that school districts serving high and low percentages of poor and nonpoor children receive similar resources for public education when federal funding is included, additional research into differences in school funding and outputs for public schools serving poor children may yield insight into policies that will increase equal opportunity.
• Identifying ways to improve elementary literacy programs for the disadvantaged. The high percentage of low-income students scoring below basic in reading by fourth grade, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, indicates the lack of opportunity to succeed for many children. Identifying effective programs to encourage literacy for disadvantaged children holds promise for increasing equal opportunity.
• Increasing supply of high-quality K-12 schools and highly effective teachers available for disadvantaged children. Researching and identifying policies that increase the availability of high-quality schools and highly effective school teachers for disadvantaged children has the potential to narrow achievement gaps and yield short- and long-term benefits for students.
• Expanding educational choice options for poor children. Researchers have conducted extensive studies of how students, including poor children, are affected by the opportunity to attend a school of their parents’ choice, and resulting improvements in educational attainment and increased in parental satisfaction. An area worthy of additional research is to examine how greater choice in education — and control of education resources beyond traditional school — will improve equal opportunity.
• Improving school safety and addressing negative school experiences that disproportionately affect disadvantaged children. National data shows that significant differences in students’ school experiences negatively affect their equal access to a high-quality learning opportunity, including school safety and absenteeism. Addressing these problems would help afford more children equal opportunity to a high-quality education.
• Addressing the enrichment and summer learning gap between poor and nonpoor children. Poor children have fewer opportunities to learn outside of school and the traditional school year. Examining and identifying policies to boost access to educational enrichment opportunities and to close the summer learning gap hold promise for strengthening equal opportunity.
• Strengthening Human Capital Networks to Address Differences in Students’ Family Characteristics. Since 1964, policymakers have recognized that family structure, including differences between one- and two-parents, affect children’s opportunities and contribute to inequality. While there are rightly limits to the scope of public policy interventions to address these inequalities, research and public policy development to strengthen human capital networks to address these kinds of differences has the potential to promote equal opportunity.
• Personalized learning and mastery-based progress. New approaches to education, including personalized learning and mastery-based progress, offer an alternative to the traditional approach of public schooling. Understanding whether and how these learning options can benefit disadvantaged children could also address opportunity gaps.

Postsecondary Education and Job Training Programs and the Implications for Equal Opportunity in K-12 Education

Available data suggests that parents’ learning opportunities strongly affect their children’s learning opportunities. Improving these programs and offering more disadvantaged adults the opportunity to learn and thereby provide better home-learning opportunities for their children, may yield significant benefits for disadvantaged children.

A half century of national laws and initiatives to improve equal opportunity in American K-12 education, and the alarming lack of progress that has been achieved, provides a sobering context for research and policy development aimed to improve access to equal opportunity in American education.

Reforming American K-12 education to establish equal opportunity involves more than 132,000 schools, 3 million schoolteachers, 3 million school employees, and — most importantly — 50 million children and their families. Such a large and complex project requires prudence, humility and a recognition that there are few simple answers. Nevertheless, in one respect there is broad agreement: all children deserve the opportunity to access a high-quality education. History and the available evidence suggest new approaches and policy reforms must be considered to make progress toward achieving the national goal.

Endnotes

[1] The U.S. Department of Education reported: “There are small differences in the effectiveness of teachers of high- and low-income students in the average study district. In both subjects, differences in the effectiveness of teachers of high- and low-income students are one percentile point, on average. The average teacher of a low-income student is just below the 50th percentile, while the average teacher of a high-income student is at the 51st percentile. As a result, providing low-income students with at least equally effective teachers typically would not substantively reduce the student achievement gap. In addition, high- and low-income students have similar chances of being taught by the most effective teachers and the least effective teachers.” [U.S. Department of Education, “Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to Effective Teachers? Evidence from 26 School Districts. U.S. Department of Education, Institute for Education Sciences, October 2016, available here. (March 11, 2019).]

[2] Sixty-eight percent of the school buildings that serve more than 75% percent of low-income children were rated as being in excellent or good condition compared to 78% of school buildings serving populations of students with less than 35% eligible for the school lunch program.

[3] Hanushek also wrote: “In one study of mine, teachers near the top of the quality distribution got an entire year’s worth of additional learning out of their students compared to those near the bottom. That is, a good teacher will get a gain of 1.5 grade level equivalent while a bad teacher will get 0.5 year during a single academic year.” Eric A. Hanushek, “Boosting Teacher Effectiveness”. (March 22, 2019)

[4] The U.S. Department of Education reported: “There are small differences in the effectiveness of teachers of high- and low-income students in the average study district. In both subjects, differences in the effectiveness of teachers of high- and low-income students are one percentile point, on average. The average teacher of a low-income student is just below the 50th percentile, while the average teacher of a high-income student is at the 51st percentile. As a result, providing low-income students with at least equally effective teachers typically would not substantively reduce the student achievement gap. In addition, high- and low-income students have similar chances of being taught by the most effective teachers and the least effective teachers.” [U.S. Department of Education, “Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to Effective Teachers? Evidence from 26 School Districts. U.S. Department of Education, Institute for Education Sciences, October 2016, at: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20174008/pdf/20174008.pdf(March 11, 2019).]

[5] U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, “Do Disadvantaged Students Get Less Effective Teaching? Key Findings from Recent Institute of Education Sciences Studies,” NCEE Evaluation Brief, January 2014. (March 31, 2019)

[6] U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, “Do Disadvantaged Students Get Less Effective Teaching? Key Findings from Recent Institute of Education Sciences Studies,” NCEE Evaluation Brief, January 2014. (March 31, 2019)

[7] Low-income children are eligible to benefit from the Child Care and Development Fund. HHS describes that the program (which was previously called the Child Care and Development Block Grant) serves approximately 1.4 million children annually. Per child estimates in Table 3 present an estimated per child amount based on FY2002, FY2003, and FY2004 appropriated funding levels, assuming a 20 percent overhead cost, and estimated 1.4 million beneficiaries. For more information, see Melina
Gish, “The Child Care and Development Block Grant: Background and Funding,” November 29, 2005, Congressional Research Service. (August 7, 2019)

[8] U.S. Government Accountability Office, Early Learning and Child Care: Agencies Have Helped Address Fragmentation and Overlap through Improved Coordination,” GAO-17–463, July 2017, at: https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/685775.pdf (March 22, 2019).

[9] Id.

[10] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, Head Start Program Facts: Fiscal Year 2005, at: https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/about-us/article/head-start-program-facts-fiscal-year-2005 (March 23, 2019).

[11] W. Steven Barnett, Ph.D., Jason T. Hustedt, Ph.D., Laura E. Hawkinson, M.P.A., and Kenneth B. Robin, Psy.D., “The State of Preschool 2006,” The National Institute for Early Education, at: http://nieer.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/YB20200620Exec20Summary.pdf (March 22, 2019).

[12] Emma Brown, “In 23 states, richer school districts get more funding than poorer districts,” The Washington Post, March 12, 2015, at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-23-states-richer-school-districts-get-more-local-funding-than-poorer-districts/?utm_term=.d620d19ca0a4&wprss=rss_education (March 10, 2019).

[13] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, Head Start Program Fact Sheets: Fiscal Year 2007, at: https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/about-us/article/head-start-program-facts-fiscal-year-2007 (March 22, 2019).

[14] Ivy Morgan and Ary Amerikaner, “Funding Gaps 2018,” Education Trust, February 27, 2018, at: https://edtrust.org/resource/funding-gaps-2018/(March 23, 2019). This assumes a 7% funding gap based on Education Trust’s research.

[15] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2017, Table 236.15, at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_236.15.asp?current=yes (March 22, 2019).

[16] Ivy Morgan and Ary Amerikaner, “Funding Gaps 2018,” Education Trust, February 27, 2018, at: https://edtrust.org/resource/funding-gaps-2018/(March 23, 2019).

[17] NAEP describes basic level of achievement as: “Eighth-grade students performing at the Basic level should be able to locate information; identify statements of main idea, theme, or author’s purpose; and make simple inferences from texts. They should be able to interpret the meaning of a word as it is used in the text. Students performing at this level should also be able to state judgments and give some support about content and presentation of content.” U.S, Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “The NAEP Reading Achievement Levels by Grade,” (August 7, 2019)

[18] Evan Rhinesmith, “A review of the research on parent satisfaction in private school choice programs,” Journal of School Choice, Volume 11, 2017. Rhinesmith wrote: “I review the research literature on parent satisfaction with private school choice programs providing vouchers, scholarships, or education savings accounts…. The reviewed studies make use of parent surveys to measure satisfaction, often comparing the responses of parents of scholarship lottery winners to those of parents of students who lost scholarship lotteries or comparing parent satisfaction in their current private school of choice to satisfaction with their previous public school. Results of all these studies show parents who can choose private schools are more satisfied with their child’s school. These studies also find higher levels of satisfaction when comparing choice parents to public school parents.”

[19] NCES reported: “A higher percentage of schools where 76 percent or more of the students were eligible for free or reduced- price lunch reported student bullying (15 percent) than schools where 25 percent or less of the students or 26 to 50 percent of the students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (10 percent each).” National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, “Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2017.” (March 22, 2019)

[20] NCES reported: “A higher percentage of schools with 76 percent or more of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch took at least one serious disciplinary action (44 percent) than did schools with 0 to 25 (25 percent) and 26 to 50 percent (34 percent) of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.” National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, “Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2017.” (March 22, 2019)

[21] Ninth grade students from the lowest two-fifths in family socioeconomic background had a 28.8 percent rate of having been suspended at least once during their education, according to data from 2012. The rate for the middle two0-fifths was 17.4 percent and 9.3 percent for the highest-fifth. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Table 233.25. (March 23, 2019)

[22] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2017, Table 207.10, at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_207.10.asp?current=yes (March 25, 2019).

[23] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2017, Table 227.40, at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_227.40.asp?current=yes (March 25, 2019).

[24] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2017, Table 227.20, at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_227.20.asp?current=yes (March 25, 2019).

[25] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2017, Table 227.20, at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_227.20.asp?current=yes (March 25, 2019).

[26] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2017, Table 218.70, at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_218.70.asp?current=yes (March 25, 2019).

[27] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2017, Table 207.30, at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_207.30.asp?current=yes (March 25, 2019).