06 Aug 2005 - 20:05

Caroline Hoxby on school competition

Hi everyone!

I'm at my mom's house visiting, but thought I'd drop in the link to Caroline Hoxby's Education Next article on schools & competition, Rising Tide

I love Hoxby's 'found experiments'; if I'd known you could do found experiments I wouldn't have left the fields of social & cognitive psychology way back when. (I don't think.)

My research shows that metropolitan areas with maximum interdistrict choice elicit consistently higher test scores than do areas with zero interdistrict choice. The 8th grade reading scores of students in highly competitive areas are 3.8 national percentile points higher than those of students in areas with no competition; their 10th grade math scores are 3.1 national percentile points higher; and their 12th grade reading scores are 5.8 national percentile points higher. Moreover, highly competitive districts spend 7.6 percent less than do districts with no competition. In other words, interdistrict competition appears to raise performance while lowering costs—the result predicted by market enthusiasts.

My comparison showed that all schools perform better in areas where there is vigorous competition among public and private schools. Areas with many low-cost private school choices score 2.7 national percentile points higher in 8th grade reading; 2.5 national percentile points higher in 8th grade math; 3.4 national percentile points higher in 12th grade reading; and 3.7 national percentile points higher in 12th grade math.

In short, both traditional forms of choice—choice among school districts and between public and private schools—influence public schools in a positive manner. To place the influence of competition on school performance in perspective, if every school in the nation were to face a high level of competition both from other districts and from private schools, the productivity of America’s schools, in terms of students’ level of learning at a given level of spending, would be 28 percent higher than it is now. And that is with a relatively diluted form of competition; traditional forms of choice do not provide strong competition because money does not follow students in a direct way. Furthermore, traditional forms of choice are not available to many families, either because they live in an uncompetitive area or because they are too poor to move to another district or pay private school tuition.

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