HOT TOPIC
School Choice Revisited
September 2003
In April 2003, the Education Forum put online a hot topic on School Choice, showing the wide diversity of countries who have implemented it, the varying forms it takes and the large number of studies that says it works to get disadvantaged children into good schools.
Five months on and the literature on school choice has increased substantially, so we are revisiting the topic to bring you the latest in school choice news and information.
On September 11, Independent Schools of New Zealand released a report showing that raising the subsidy rate to independent schools is likely to reduce the government's schooling costs and improve overall school performance. More information is at the ISNZ website.
An Education Forum media release said the report's suggestion of funding all schools - irrespective of who owns them - at the same per-student level, clearly showed up the jurassic-park-like nature of current policies.
"Current school funding policy stands out as totally anachronistic. The early childhood and tertiary sectors get much more evenly-balanced funding and as a result have far more diversity and better access to quality education," policy advisor Norman LaRocque said.
On September 10, the Fraser Institute in Canada released the first Canadian Education Freedom Index. This landmark publication measures and ranks 10 provinces on policies affecting a family's educational choices and explores the links between educational freedom and academic achievement. More information is at the Fraser Institute website.
The US House of Representatives narrowly approved the States' first federally funded school voucher plan on 5 September, endorsing a five-year pilot programme for at least 1,300 children in Washington D.C in what some supporters called "shock treatment" for the city's struggling public education system.
In early September, the Manhattan Institute released a report showing that vouchers help improve education provided by public schools and that the amount the schools improve is directly related to the degree of threat they face from vouchers.
Pay parents £2500 to go private: a radical plan to empower poor parents to abandon failing state schools and go private instead has been unveiled in a new report by the London-based Adam Smith Institute.
In July, an Education Forum media release argued that an Education Review Office report on the performance of Catholic schools in New Zealand strongly highlighted the benefits of, and need for, choice in education.
In June, the Education Forum ran a Subtext story showing the success of vouchers in two other studies - for disabled students and African American students.
An opinion piece by Andy Rotherham of the Washington D.C-based Progressive Policy Institute, published in the New Zealand Education Review, highlights the "imperative to improve schooling and the demand for greater parental choice" unleashing new innovations and raising difficult questions.
The school choice movement is making significant gains in the US according to a book released this year from Heritage Foundation education researcher Krista Kafer.
Public education isn't sacrosanct, says Ms Kafer in an online, September, opinion piece.
"Institutions are made to serve people, not the other way around. The old solutions - more programmes, more regulations, new computers, lower class sizes, and higher spending - haven't brought us the improvement we know children need," Ms Kafer says.
The British Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has promised to give parents the power to take their children out of failing schools and move them to another of their choice, the BBC reported in July.
Fallacies about school choice have been exposed in a report for the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs.
The wide-spread assumption that private schools are for upper classes and are irrelevant to the poor is challenged by a report showing a 'phenomenon of private schools serving low-income families' in Hyderabad, India. The CfBT study has revealed a huge private sector serving the city's slums. Official figures from Hyderabad District show 61% of pupils in 1,000 private, non state-aided schools.
Lance Izumi, director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, argues that empirical research is a very important supplement to the case for school choice - but "remember, however, that the Berlin Wall fell because people responded to the moral appeal of freedom, not because of Pentagon figures on missile throw weights".
"Perverted…contorted…cruel" - long-time Democrat mayor of Milwaukee, where a school choice programme since 1990, John Norquist earlier this year described the ignored 'school choice' based on geography and wealth as it operates in much of the United States.
Critics of school choice often argue that school choice benefits only the best and brightest, leaving behind those children who are most difficult to educate. They also argue that vouchers lead to the establishment of 'fly-by-night' schools and drain public schools of revenue. Florida disproves those claims, a report from the CATO Institute argues.
