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“Most of the work on government responses to competition has focused on the market for competition, and here the literature is strikingly consistent — competition improves public schools. Almost across the board, researchers have found that school spending is lower, academic outcomes are better and school district efficiency is higher where parents have more choice in the children’s educational provider. Furthermore, competitive benefits emerge regardless of whether the competitor is a private school or another public school.” United States economist Lori Taylor, Economic and Financial Review (second quarter, 2000). “Why should a mother set aside time to read bedtime stories every night to her toddlers, so they can start their first day at school equipped with a basic knowledge of language and a love of books, only to find she must send them to the nearest school even if she doesn't like its education standards?” Deborah Coddington, ACT party conference, Wellington, 15 March, 2003.
Australian private school enrolments boom Private school enrolments increased at 20 times the rate of government schools during the past decade, The Australian reported in February. An Australian Bureau of Statistics survey has revealed a private school boom during the 1990s, with private schools opening at almost the same rate as government schools closed, the paper said. In the decade to 2002, the total number of schools fell by 3.3% to 9632, with the number of government schools falling by 6.4% to 6969 and the number of private schools growing by 6.1% to 2663. Full-time private school enrolments grew by 20.8% in that period, while enrolments at government schools increased by just 1%. Despite the booming popularity of private education, more than two-thirds of Australia’s 3.3 million students were still enrolled in government schools, according to The Australian. The full report can be read at The Australian.
Parental decisions should drive the “education enterprise”, says report A report released last month advocates reconstructing schools based on “the principles of accountability, transparency and choice”. The Koret task force on K-12 education report argues that “parental decisions rather than bureaucratic regulation should drive the education enterprise”. It says every United States school or education provider — at least those that accept public dollars — should be held to rigorous, statewide academic standards; statewide assessments of student and school performance; and statewide systems of incentives and interventions tied to academic results. Failing schools should be closed, reconstituted or taken over by others, including contracting out their management to private providers. Students in those schools should have the right — and full funding — to leave for better schools, including private ones. The Koret report, Our Schools and Our Future, is available from this website.
Report card for British Columbia schools The Fraser Institute this month released its 2003 Report Card on British Columbia’s secondary schools. This annual report is the only one of its kind to analyse relevant, publicly available data to rate and rank 279 of BC’s public and independent secondary schools. The foundation of the Report Card is an overall rating of each school’s academic performance. Building on data about student results provided by the Ministry of Education, each school is rated on a scale from zero to 10. Peter Cowley, director of school performance studies at The Fraser Institute and co-author of the Report Card, said parents had increasing choice of schools for their children and the Report Card’s academic indicators could be used to compare schools. It could also be used to help identify aspects of a school’s academic performance that could be improved. A pdf of the complete ratings and overall rankings can be downloaded from this web page.
Sylvan stock soars on sale announcement Following United States company Sylvan Learning Systems’ surprise announcement it was to sell its signature tutoring business to concentrate on running universities overseas and on the Internet, the company had the biggest Nasdaq stock market gains on 12 March, jumping 30%, The Baltimore Sun reported.
Book about 12-year battle for school choice in US released The Cato Institute has released a book detailing school choice proponents’ 12-year struggle to have school choice recognised. The struggle ended in last year’s ground-breaking US Supreme Court case which on June 27, 2002 upheld the constitutionality of vouchers. In the book, author Clint Bolick, one of the United States’ premier fighters for school choice and counsel in the Supreme Court case, “recounts the drama and the tactics of the … battle for choice, and in the process distills crucial lessons for future educational freedom battles”. The book can be bought at the CATO bookstore.
School choice proponent wins educational excellence award Three leading education reformers, including a liberal voice for school choice, last month received awards for educational excellence. One of the three US $25,000 Fordham Foundation prizes went to Paul E. Peterson, a Harvard University professor whose research of school choice has led to a way to test the value of school vouchers in carefully controlled studies that measure both student achievement and social consequences of vouchers. Mr Peterson considered himself “a quirky liberal”; but as he began his voucher-programme studies in the mid-1990s, he “was troubled by the deplorable state of big urban school systems”, believing they were “at the core of the larger problem of inequality in American society. They have to be fixed first,” the Fordham Foundation prize book states. “Yet more than any other individual, Paul Peterson’s groundbreaking research has provided the evidentiary force that has helped enable thousands of disadvantaged students to use vouchers to attend private schools.” More details on the awards can be found at this Fordham Foundation web page. The prize book is at this web page. Paul Peterson is director of Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance.
Who benefits from public education expenditures? — report asks A new report by education specialist Ayesha Vawda looks at the evidence on the extent to which public education spending has been effective in reaching the poor. The report in Economic Affairs,, March 2003, vol. 23, no. 1, says the distribution of educational expenditures is inequitable, especially at the post-primary levels, where poor income groups are under-represented compared with higher income groups. It recommends “targeted financing and a redefinition of the role of the government vis-à-vis the non-public sector” to help achieve “greater equity and efficiency” and get education to more low-income people. In most countries, governments remain the largest financiers and providers of education, it says. The report can be bought from this website.
Vouchers and voucher-like schemes in developing countries
Source: Patrinos, H.A. (2000) 'Market Forces in Education', European Journal of Education 35(1);6J-80. (This is a partial list. See the above paper for more details.) |
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