Nine scholars released an essay this morning looking back at the growth and maturation of school choice programs since start of the Milwaukee scholarship program in 1990 and the passage, in Minnesota, of the nation’s first charter school law in 1991.

The key question so far in empirical studies (in Milwaukee; New York City; Dayton, Ohio; Charlotte, N.C.; and Washington, D.C.) has been to gauge the programs’ impact on participating students. Achievement gains, they found, happen more cumulatively over time while graduation rates have shown to be tremendously impacted. The studies have also shown that school choice has not negatively affected traditional public school achievement.

They went on to summarize the findings of these numerous studies: “the goal of school choice should be not simply to move students from existing public schools into existing private schools, but to facilitate the emergence of new school entrants; i.e., entrepreneurs creating more effective solutions to educational challenges. This requires better-designed choice policies and the alignment of many other factors—such as human capital, private funding, and consumer-information sources—that extend beyond public policy. Public policy by itself will not fulfill the full potential of school choice.”

The studies looked at in the essay focus on existing school choice programs, not what could potentially exist in the future. Parents need even more options in being able to choose what educational model is best for their children.

Read the full essay which looks at several studies on parental school choice here.