Inserting much-needed historical context into the voucher debates, "Freedom of Choice: Vouchers in American Education" treats school vouchers as a series of social movements set within the context of evolving American conservatism. The study ranges from the use of tuition grants in the 1950s and early 1960s in the interest of fostering segregation to the wider acceptance of vouchers in the 1990s as a means of counteracting real and perceived shortcomings of urban public schools.

The rise of school vouchers, author Jim Carl suggests, is best explained as a mechanism championed by four...