Review of Unproductive School Choice Debates: All Sides Assert Much That is Wrong, Misleading, or Irrelevant Review of Unproductive School Choice Debates: All Sides Assert Much That Is Wrong, Misleading, or Irrelevant , by John Merrifield and Nathan Gray, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2023, 266 pp., $90 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1475870923

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. The decline in Catholic school enrollment, of course, strongly correlates with the rise in tuition associated with the decline in number of highly skilled, low-cost religious (i.e., priests, nuns, and monks).2. Graduates include such notables as Rex Sinquefield, founder of the World Chess Hall of Fame and the Show-me Institute think tank, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, and Jeannie Leavitt, the nation’s first female fighter pilot. See “Bishop DuBourg High School,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_DuBourg_High_School3. Students who transferred to their local public school reported easier classes and earlier graduation.4. “Table 216.90. Public elementary and secondary charter schools and enrollment, and charter schools and enrollment as a percentage of total public schools and total enrollment in public schools, by state: Selected school years, 2000–01 through 2021–22,” Digest of Education Statistics, US Department of Education.5. Or, from about .09% of all schools in 2000 to 6.75% in 2022.6. “Table 205.10. Private elementary and secondary school enrollment and private enrollment as a percentage of total enrollment in public and private schools, by region and grade level: Selected years, fall 1995 through fall 2019,” Digest of Education Statistics, US Department of Education.7. MN Association of Charter Schools, “Minnesota’s Charter School Story.” https://mncharterschools.org/advocacy/mn-charter-school-story.php8. An interesting parallel exists in an often-overlooked subset of US education, alternative schools for those students that no regular schools want.In the years following World War II, the United States hosted several hundred low-cost military schools where troubled or disorganized children might go to learn focus and discipline within a highly structured environment. Most have since closed, victims of anti-military sentiment from the 1960s on, and now number less than a few dozen.In their place have arisen hundreds of private “therapeutic” boarding schools where some of today’s out-of-control or drug-addicted teenagers may find peace in supportive cocoons of licensed counselors, nurses, and social workers. Only some students are welcome, however, because annual fees can exceed one-hundred thousand dollars.9. For example, see Oransky, I, & Marcus, A. (2017, January 13). Gaming the system, scientific “cartels” band together to cite each other’s work, STAT. https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/13/citation-cartels-science/