Parental-choice debates typically focus on whether private schools should receive public funds "at all." This paper focuses on a question that inevitably follows when schools do receive them--the question of accountability. That is, what regulatory conditions ought to attend private schools' receipt of public funds? This is an enormously complicated question. On one level, it is entirely reasonable to condition private schools' participation in parental-choice programs on some government oversight. When the government acquires goods or services from the private sector, surely it is entitled to ensure that it receives what it is paying for. On the other hand, this simple logic masks enormous complexities: For what should private schools be held accountable? How should regulators determine whether their performance satisfies accountability standards? What ought to be the consequences of nonperformance? To what extent do--or might-- accountability regulations threaten the autonomy and religious liberty of participating schools? This report tackles these questions, focusing on academic accountability: How should regulators hold private schools that receive public funds accountable for their students' academic performance? After reviewing current accountability regulations in private-school-choice programs, the paper discusses challenges that are presented when parental choice and accountability policies intersect. These challenges include opponents' often disingenuous deployment of accountability demands as a weapon to undermine parental choice; the problem of selection bias; the risk that accountability regulations deter some schools from participating; and the limits of the standardized tests on which most accountability regulations rely.
