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The National Center on School Choice is funded by the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The Center exercises national leadership in school choice research, including charter and magnet schools, private school vouchers, teacher recruitment, school management, and state policymaking.
Peabody College at Vanderbilt University
The Center's lead institution is Vanderbilt University, a national private university located in Nashville, Tennessee. The Center is managed by the Learning Sciences Institute on the campus of Peabody College, one of the nation's top graduate schools of education. Learn more |
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 Letter of Welcome from Director Mark Berends
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Welcome to the National Center on School Choice (NCSC). Here you’ll find information about ongoing research on the effects of school choice and competition on individuals and school systems. Our work takes place across multiple disciplines and methodologies, and our aim is simple: to provide national intellectual leadership on the study of school choice.
Policymakers, parents, and students need to know what effects they can expect to see from the school options they have in their district. Will school choice raise student achievement? Improve instructional and curricular quality? Stratify and/or segregate students along racial or class lines? Meet the needs of special education and disabled students? Spur traditional school districts to change their behavior? Face limitations from political and legal constraints?
To answer these questions, the Center has assembled a multidisciplinary team of sociologists, economists, psychologists, political scientists, curriculum experts, psychometricians, statisticians, public finance analysts, and legal scholars This collaborative effort has partnered the Center’s lead research institution, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, with these top universities and research organizations: the Brookings Institution, Brown University, Harvard University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Northwest Evaluation Association, Stanford University, and the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis.
Our main program of research consists of data that researchers from these disciplines and institutions jointly collect, share, and analyze. As part of this effort, the Center coordinates major experimental studies of students randomly selected to attend charter schools. We are comparing the academic performance over time of students who win the lottery to those who lose. In addition, we are gathering a variety of data in similarly matched charter and regular public schools to understand differences in classroom instruction, school resources, professional development, and student achievement growth. And we are investigating other choice options, such as magnet and private schools; vouchers; school transfer options under No Child Left Behind; supplemental educational services; and home schooling.
We invite you to explore this site to learn more about our work.
The National Center on School Choice is funded by a grant from the Institute for Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education. The grant is a cooperative agreement between the Institute for Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, and Vanderbilt University.
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