The Children's Scholarship Fund's initial $180 million is being used to help finance four years of private school for 40,000 children from low-income families around the country.
The IRS allowed a grandmother to prepay eight years of private school tuition, worth $150,000, free of gift tax, not long before her death.
"But as mad as I am, I can see that this was a family with three kids, and that extra hundred thousand they got, from whoever that B-list celebrity was, represented three years' worth of private school tuition".
While there were no significant overall gains among students of other ethnic groups, black students in their second year of private-school attendance improved their test scores by 6.3 percentile points -- a striking advance at a time when schools around the country are trying to close a persistent gap between scores of white and black students.
By the time I was in ninth grade, I was using drugs and alcohol, and a year later I was kicked out of private school.
The pizzeria reminded her of private school.
Municipally run public schools typically provide this education, although the number of private schools has increased in recent years.
But with the popularity of private schools booming, hundreds have opened in recent years, Ms. Racho said.
"It's been a difficult year" for private schools, said Sue Fieldman, author of "The Good Schools Guide," an independent survey of schools in the country.
There are a number of private schools.
