论择校与教育公平的追求——从择校政策的演变看我国公立学校体制变革的时代走向

本文以我国政府在基础教育择校问题上的认识及政策演变作为切入口,同时对过去十年中始终纠缠在教育投入不足与治理教育乱收费的中小学择校政策进行全面而深入的审视,以期能在此基础上就新的思维框架提出若干新的建议与对策。     

Marketization and privatization in mass education systems

Recent education reform in many countries has sought to dismantle centralized educational bureaucracies to create systems that emphasize parental choice and competition between schools, thereby creating quasi-markets in educational services. In addition to this widespread marketization of public education systems, publicly financed and provided education services have been privatized. In this paper, marketization and privatization policies are compared, and initial research evidence on the impact of marketization and privatization in England, the USA, Australia and New Zealand is examined in the light of the claims about diversity of provision, efficiency, effectiveness and equity. Also considered in the significance of attempts currently underway in the UK and elsewhere to temper the emphasis on consumer rights within policies of marketization and privatization with a renewed concern for the citizen rights traditionally associated with social-democratic approaches to education policy.     

A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

Private Schools,Choice And The Ethical Environment

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the relationship between the existence of private schools and public attitudes towards questions about educational provision. Data from the 2010 British Social Attitudes survey suggest that parents who choose to send children to private schools may become more entrenched in their support for more extensive forms of parental partiality, with potential ramifications for the future supporting of progressive education policy. We suggest that addressing questions about the existence of certain forms of education and school choice policies requires consideration of the broader ethical environment.     

Religious affiliation,ethnicity, and power in admission policies to Jewish religious schools

This paper analyzes the challenges embedded in the conflict between the right to accessible education, which implies a prohibition on discriminatory practices in school admission, and the right to adaptable education, which accommodates children’s cultural affiliations. It shows that a normative lens, which examines the ways by which legal rules correspond to conflicting rights and interests, cannot fully capture the tension between legal prohibitions on discrimination in education and the sociocultural norms in religious communities. Thus, the paper offers a socio-legal lens, which focuses on the context of admission policies to Jewish religious schools. Based on three test cases of admission policies to Jewish religious schools in Israel, England, and Flanders, Belgium, the paper demonstrates how the legal rules regulating the admission policies are influenced by social forces. In Israel and England, these forces have facilitated a descent down slippery slope, originating with religious criteria, but concluding with discriminatory criteria. They also shaped admission practices reflecting the asymmetric power relations between the institutional school systems and individual families. The paper highlights the benefits of the Belgian policy, which proscribes religious classification of school candidates. This policy circumvents the ambiguous distinction between religion, ethnicity, and social class, and expands educational choices.     

PERCEPTIONS OF THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AMONG RELIGIOUS TEACHER EDUCATION STUDENTS IN ISRAEL

This research examines the purposes of education perceived by teacher education students preparing for a career in Israeli public religious schools. Participants were 164 men and 364 women in their first or final year of teacher education. They responded to questionnaires that explored educational purposes in four ways. Twenty-four students also were interviewed. Major results indicate that: 1) universal and religious purposes of education are considered highly important; 2) men attribute greater importance than women to religious- Torah purposes; 3) academic-intellectual growth is not considered an important educational purpose. Implications of these and other findings are considered for educational policy and practice in public religious schools.     

Educational equality in China: analysing educational policies for migrant children in Beijing

This paper focuses on the education of migrant children in Beijing. As of the late 1990s, the Chinese Government has developed several policies to address educational issues among migrant children. The present study analyses data from interviews with key education personnel in Beijing to explore the outcomes of the implementation of such migrant children’s education (MCE) policies and the reasons for variation from policy design. The data suggest that there is poorer equality in terms of education among migrant vs. local children than the government has reported. Migrant children are faced with numerous strict admission procedures for public schools. The Chinese Government has not prioritised educational equality, despite professing to do so. The capability and motivation of local institutions for policy implementation are less adequate than might be expected. Using Honig’s model of policy implementation, this research shows that the outcomes of the MCE policies are a product of interaction between policy design, participants and implementation context.     

Finding a Golden Mean in Education Policy: Centering Religious and Public Schools

The separation between Church and State, private and public education, is blurring, and coming together, as the government gives families vouchers to attend private and religious schools. Religious groups are starting and supporting their own charter schools, and local jurisdictions (cities and counties) are providing free transportation and food services to children attending private schools. What emerges, and is the focus of this analysis, is the new “middle ground,” a “golden mean,” by which public schools learn diversity and choice while private/religious schools are helped by public programs and funds. The oldest, perhaps, was Lyndon Johnson's compromise with the Catholics to get Title 1 passed as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that sends public school teachers into private schools to help children in need. This study examines the emergence of a middle group in public–private education, and how the policies are working and what's changing. It argues that the child is the center of education, and government and private agencies are changing and should come together to serve the clients, the children.     

Canadian offshore schools in China: a comparative policy analysis

Internationalisation is no longer a well-recognised feature unique to higher education. It has permeated K-12 education. However, little research has been done on internationalisation at the K-12 level, particularly on offshore schools. This study examines how Canadian and Chinese policies regarding offshore schools have developed over the years, what values and objectives underlie such policies, and how they affect present and future development of Canadian offshore schools in China. The study identifies in/consistencies and priorities in policy-making and implementation and uncovers the trend of policy development through comparing stipulations on international cooperation of both countries. It shows that both countries are making policies and action plans based on their national interest in the international context without giving adequate attention to the legal, political, and social cultures of the other country. This leads to inconsistencies and confusions in their international educational cooperation and creates potential hindrance to its further development.     

美国基础教育阶段择校的最新发展与实施成效

近二十年来,择校在美国规模不断扩大,形式日趋多样。除学券计划外,各种税收抵免和教育储蓄账户应运而生,一部分公立学校也打开校门,实施"开放入学"政策。每种择校形式内,又有不同的变式。不过,由于家长和学生的择校标准不同于决策者的假设,各校也想办法选择成绩较优或家庭背景较好的学生,所以择校在某种程度上没有实现预期的效果。它很少服务于最贫困、最需要帮助的学生,在推动公立学校改革方面作用有限。     

School educational project as a criterion of school choice: discourses and practices in the city of Barcelona

In its advancement towards an education quasi-market, Catalonia has recently been driving the development of school educational projects in all schools (both public and private) as a tool to facilitate school autonomy and family choices. A school educational project is a formal document in which schools identify their pedagogical goals, missions and orientations, their academic resources and organisational structures. Through the analysis of 60 in-depth interviews with parents of children at the age of commencing universal pre-primary education (three years old) and data collected from surveys completed by a representative sample made up of 3245 families, this article explores the impact of this policy on discourses and practices of school choice amongst families in the city of Barcelona. On the one hand, we observe that interest in educational projects has penetrated the discourses of the most educated parents, even though, at the same time, we detect a generalised lack of knowledge of the content of such projects. On the other hand, we note that the social composition of schools is still a prominent factor in choice practices. Such findings question the ideal of the autonomous and rational citizen-consumer that underlies the policy of establishing educational projects.     

Stealth marketisation: how international school policy is quietly challenging education systems in Asia

Across Asia, the international school scene has experienced marketisation and corporatisation. A consequence is that many wealthier families – outside of expatriate communities – view international schools as a desirable choice, and they seek ways to enrol their children in international schools. States have responded to this situation through policies that manage the boundaries between public or national school systems and international schools. States have made compromises in their international school policies – compromises that allow markets to creep into the broader education systems. This mode of market creation is subtle: Neither families nor state agents advocate for ‘choice’ as a value, nor are there public discourses around international schools in the region celebrating ‘choice’ in education. The compromises made in international school policy relate to whole education systems and have implications for inequality, citizenship, and national identity.     

Public education and student movements: the Chilean rebellion under a neoliberal experiment

Abstract

Chile is recognized in the educational policy field as one of the first laboratories of neoliberal initiatives. These policies, initiated under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, did not change with the new democratic governments after 1990. This characteristic led international organizations to promote the Chilean policies in different contexts in Latin America and beyond. In 2006, a high school student movement occupied public and private schools, demystifying the outcomes of these policies. A new wave of demonstrations took place in 2011, with a college student leadership that paralyzed a significant amount of universities and schools throughout the country. After both waves of mobilizations, the political system opened the process of policy-making that considered the demands of social movements. In this article, we explore the dynamics between educational policies and social student movements in Chile, and the possibilities of change in favor of public education.     

Catechesis and Religious Education in Canadian Catholic Schools

A key concept in contemporary Catholic educational discourse makes a distinction between religious education and catechesis. This distinction is based on the assumptions of faith commitment on the part of catechesis and the focus on cognitive outcomes on the part of religious education. Many official documents on Canadian Catholic school education, however, reflect an understanding that closely associated catechesis with religious education or fail to sufficiently distinguish between the two. The article argues that changes in contemporary culture make catechetical models of religious education problematic and that Catholic schools in Canada would be well served by an approach that emphasizes the educational goals of religious education. This is not to say that catechesis has no place in religious education but this is best achieved by making use of cognitive and effective outcomes in lesson planning and realizing that the school as a whole has many opportunities to foster catechesis.     

Creating Educational Destruction: A Critical Exploration of Central Neoliberal Concepts and Their Transformative Effects on Public Education

Individualism and competition are central neoliberal concepts that have profoundly altered the U.S. public education system. This article draws on poststructuralist theory and advances the argument that these concepts have produced problematic policies and deeply flawed school choice mechanisms such as charter schools and school vouchers. I also explore how educational activists contested neoliberal ideology and reshaped reality as they defeated a neoliberal education policy in North Carolina.     

'The Trouble with Our Schools': A media construction of public discourses on Queensland schools

This paper gives an account of competing public discourses on schooling. In particular, it investigates one newspaper's coverage of the release of an educational report. The paper combines interview data with a critical discourse analysis of newspaper texts to show how media reporting of Queensland schools constructed a preferred discourse on education that represented schools as being in crisis, 'in trouble'. The analysis describes how the paper shaped popular opinion on educational policy through the construction of public discourses of crisis in education. Further, the analysis shows how this discourse positioned particular groups as the authoritative voice on standards in Queensland schools. It shows how, at a time when teacher quality was under question, the media constructed a public discourse that diminished the authority of teachers to speak about education policy, granting that authority to the newspaper's editor, who assumed the people's voice on educational issues. This analysis of the construction of public discourses about education policy gives insights into the media's place in educational policy-making. In so doing, the paper adds to the small body of literature that investigates the relationships between the media and education.     

Education for the other: policy and provision for Muslim children in the UK and Swedish education systems

The European Convention on Human Rights has been signed by both the UK and Sweden as well as other European states, providing legal justification for accommodating the educational needs of religious minorities. This legal entitlement is explored in the paper, with particular reference to parental choice for schools based on an Islamic ethos. How the UK and Sweden have responded to accommodate the religious convictions of Muslim families is the focus of discussion, drawing on historical and policy backgrounds. The paper also draws on the theoretical work of Kumashiro and the concept of ‘Education for the Other’, examining the positioning of minority groups within the broad context of a multicultural society and the challenge of accommodating religious convictions in a climate of increasing support for cultural assimilation.     

Choice, Diversity and 'Exit' in Schooling — A Mixed Picture

Traditionally, most systems have required that parents send their children to a school within the district of residence and close to the family home, sometimes with an elite private system co-existing alongside. In recent years, this basic model has been modified, with some countries witnessing more extensive changes than others. This article outlines the range of change that has taken place along the dual axes of promoting diversity and establishing room for the exercise of parental choice. The synthesis article draws on the material submitted by all the countries participating in the OECD study, and not only those which feature specifically in this issue.
The first section reviews the current situation regarding parental choice of school and evidence relating to how that choice is exercised by different groups of parents. For choice to be exercised, there must be alternatives to choose from, and hence there follows a review of some of the policies and practices for diversity. The article then examines diversity in more forms contrasting selective and non-selective schools, public and private schools, and formal and home schooling. Several countries have moved to greater diversification of public education, allowing for different types of schools accommodating different student ability levels or parents' educational preferences. The role of demand is clearly a central element in their emergence and differing fortunes. This in turn is closely, but not exclusively, related to the familiar factors of social advantage and reproduction as well as to issues of value choices and beliefs.     

Socioeconomic school segregation in a market-oriented educational system. The case of Chile

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the socioeconomic status (SES) school segregation in Chile, whose educational system is regarded as an extreme case of a market-oriented education. The study estimated the magnitude and evolution of the SES segregation of schools at both national and local levels, and it studied the relationship between some local educational market dynamics and the observed magnitude of SES school segregation at municipal level. The main findings were: first, the magnitude of the SES segregation of both low-SES and high-SES students in Chile was very high (Duncan Index ranged from 0.50 to 0.60 in 2008); second, during the last decade, SES school segregation tended to slightly increase in Chile, especially in high schools (both public and private schools); third, private schools – including voucher schools – were more segregated than public schools for both low-SES and high-SES students; and finally, some market dynamics operating in the Chilean education (like privatization, school choice, and fee-paying) accounted for a relevant proportion of the observed variation in SES school segregation at municipal level. These findings are analyzed from an educational policy perspective in which the link between SES school segregation and market-oriented mechanisms in education plays a fundamental role.     

加拿大公共基础教育管理市场化改革面临的新挑战

加拿大自20世纪90年代以来,利用市场调节机制对公共基础教育管理进行了一系列的深度变革.免费、平等、全民的公立中小学教育,严格的公共基础教育监察管理机制,强大的公共基础教育经费支持,改革后的加拿大公共基础教育呈现出了繁荣的景象.然而,自由市场机制这柄双刃剑在帮助变革取得成功的同时,也令加拿大公共基础教育管理不得不迎接新一轮的挑战.