Thanksgiving is like any other meal with my family, a kind of Bizarro Table where religion and politics are the only topics. Well, that's not quite true, but I did get into a spirited debate with my father (a high school English teacher) about whether or not school choice, be it among district schools, charter schools, vouchers, or some combination, has the effect of removing the brightest and most motivated kids from struggling schools and leaving the students who remain in an even worse environment than before. That particular argument went around and around, but with an ever-expanding body of research based on school choice lotteries, we can see where kids given the opportunity to attend a better school do better than kids who aren't, even when both groups' parents were motivated enough to apply to a school choice program and even when they start off comparable in terms of economic status and academic achievement.

Jay P Greene has picked out two studies based on data from Charlotte, NC that suggest the benefits to school choice lottery winners expand beyond academics to other indicators like rates of arrest. Would but I could find a less staunchly pro-choice critic than Jay P. Greene, I would post her review of the studies here, but the findings look exciting to me. Please register or login to share your thoughts below.

Of course, personally, I would be better off today had I not been given the choice to eat that extra slice of pie on Thursday...