School Choice

Around the world, choice and competition across a range of sectors have been shown to deliver lower costs, better quality and increased innovation.  While evidence in the school sector is more tentative, a growing body of research is emerging that choice and competition can play an important role in improving its performance.

School choice policies are a reality in a wide range of countries – developed and developing.  In some cases, school choice is a new phenomenon.  In others, it has been a feature of the education landscape for many years.  In the Netherlands, for example, school choice has been operating successfully since 1917. A recent report highlights the Dutch scheme.

Last week (17 April), Colorado’s Governor signed into law a bill creating the first school voucher programme since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled public funds could be used for tuition at private schools, including religious ones. A CNN story has more details.

In New Zealand, a voucher programme ran successfully for four years in the 1990s until it was closed for political reasons. A comprehensive review of the programme highlights its effectiveness. 

In March this year, the Education Forum put out a special edition of Subtext, its monthly newsletter, devoted to school choice and looking at how it has been implemented in six highly different countries: Brazil, Colombia, Denmark, the Netherlands, United States and Sweden.

In other new Education Forum publications we further explore school choice and what it could mean for New Zealand education:

• A new report advocates 'accountable choice' whereby funding follows students into new or existing schools of choice: government-, private- or church-run. The report, from the 21st Century School Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington DC think tank.
   
• A recent media release highlights how the situation surrounding the funding of private, Tokoroa-based Arorangi School shows the need for school choice and school funding reform in New Zealand.
   
• Centre for Independent Studies researcher Jennifer Buckingham highlights why school choice would be good for New Zealand in her OpEd School zoning: fairness or fraud.
   
• A speech Ms Buckingham gave in Wellington last month highlights why school choice makes sense.
   
• In an extract from the recent Education Forum book The Crisis in New Zealand Schools, author Martin Hames lays out, in a highly readable and entertaining way, the arguments for and against school choice.
   
• An Education Forum Briefing Paper released in early April shows that government funding of non-government schools is a worldwide phenomenon.

“The clear message from the report is that public funding of non-government schools is widespread and that there is a wide range of models for financing the education of students at non-government schools,” says Education Forum policy advisor Norman LaRocque.

School choice websites

• The School of Government at Harvard University runs the Program on Education Policy and Governance which has held conferences and published widely on school choice.
   
• The National Center for the Study of Privatisation in Education provides an independent, non-partisan source of analysis and information on privatisation in education.
   
• The CATO Institute has a large selection of studies and commentary on school choice.
   
• The Progressive Policy Institute, a ‘third way’ think tank, puts vouchers in perspective.
   
• The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation works to “improve the quality of education available to children of all income and social classes, be that in government or private schools or at home”.
   
• The Heritage Foundation’s annual school choice report, Progress on School Choice in the States, looks back on 2002.