Fighting for the Freedom to Learn: Examining America's Centuries-Old School Choice Movement

Over the last few years, school choice has exploded around the country. For many people, including journalists who write about it and policymakers who work on it, school choice can seem like a new phenomenon. But is it?

Fighting for the Freedom to Learn reveals that, while funding following kids to educational options their parents desire--as opposed to public schools to which they have been assigned--has historically not been the American norm, government efforts to make private education affordable relative to public schools have existed or been campaigned for as long as there have been public schools.

In this edited volume, experts examine school choice from the colonial period to the modern day, including largely free-market education provision in the colonial and early-American periods, efforts to maintain diverse educational options during the rise of public schooling, the near death of private education, and the choice movement's reawakening. The book reveals that the fight for choice is not new, but that the desire for diversity in education has been a constant part of American history.