Robert N. Gross - Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America

In his deeply researched history of the educational marketplace in the U.S., Gross, Assistant Academic Dean at Sidwell Friends School and a historian specializing in American educational and legal history, shows that the system of choice in place today is a result of cooperation between government and private interests. His account looks back to the rise of Catholic parochial schools, the first of the nation’s private schools, in the late nineteenth century. While states felt that these threatened their near-monopoly on education and even tried to ban Catholic schools in the 1920s, the two sides eventually worked together to cultivate an environment in which both public and private education could co-exist and thrive.