American families are facing more choices than ever before in the nation's history when it comes to choosing what type of school their children will attend. Alternatives to the traditional neighborhood school setting include privately run public schools, charter and magnet schools, publicly financed voucher programs and home schooling. The debate surrounding these choices was recently heightened when the Supreme Court upheld Cleveland's voucher program.

In exploring the civic impact of the fragmentation of traditional public education, issues are raised as to the consequences such school choices will have on society. Professor Clive R. Belfield of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, at
Teachers College at Columbia University, explains "There have been concerns that if people flee from the public sector to the private sector, the public sector will suffer. But there isn't a great deal of evidence that the public sector loses much, and some people even say that it gains, since the people who go to the private sector free up a bit of resource for those who remain in the public sector."

The article, entitled "Alternatives to Neighborhood School Are Vaster Than Ever" appeared in the June 29th, 2002 edition of the New York Times.

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Published Saturday, Jul. 27, 2002