For decades, scholars and politicians have debated the likely impacts of school choice. Yet few have studied the nation's largest state-level charter school market, Arizona, whose 20-year-old charter sector accounts for about 17% of Arizona public school enrollment. This article summarizes the extant literature on this market, some 23 studies, supplemented with original fieldwork to derive tentative lessons for social scientists and policymakers. While the charter sector seems to have promoted innovation, teacher and parent empowerment, and modest improvement in traditional public schools, findings regarding student learning and segregation are less clear.

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Prior work has defined the Educational–Industrial Complex (EIC) as an interlocking set of public and private institutions which operate mainly to serve children and taxpayers, but also in part as budget maximizers. We test hypotheses about EIC growth using (mainly) cross-sectional data from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations. Findings indicate that, as per capita wealth and unionization grow, nations spend relatively more on education and schools have a higher staff to student ratio (lower class size). Time series data indicate that cross-nationally, class size falls over time.