Welcome to the report card with Nat Malchus, the Education Policy podcast from the American Enterprise Institute.

Many school choice proponents today focus on what choice does for the students who use it

to leave traditional public schools. But one of the original arguments for choice was that through

competition, it would spur traditional public schools to improve. So has it? Do choice programs make traditional public schools better? Does the size of the

competitive effects depend on the type of choice program? And what other factors might matter for the

amount of pressure that traditional public schools feel? To discuss these questions and more,

I invited Sarah Cordes onto the podcast.

Sarah Cordes is an associate professor of policy, organizational and leadership studies at Temple

University. Sarah Cordes, welcome to the report card. Thank you for having me. So Sarah,

you've done a fair amount of research on school choice. Why? What is it

about school choice that interests you? So actually, it's because right after undergrad, I spent

a couple of years teaching in a Catholic school in Washington, D.C. And at the time I was teaching there, you know, we had a few

students at the school that were participants in the D.C. voucher program. And also, right as I was

leaving, was the time in D.C. a bunch of Catholic schools converted over to charter schools.

So I was sort of there on the beginnings of that.

And so all of that was just really interesting to me in terms of, you know,

how it was affecting the kids and the schools and all of that stuff overall.

Sarah, in this conversation,

I want to talk about the competitive effects of school choice.

So just a basic question to start with.

What are we referring to when we talk about

the competitive effects of choice?

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