School choice: The issues and the options

Conclusion I would like to close with a plea for more research on the effects of competition and choice on the functioning of the education system. Despite the large proportion of national budgets devoted to education, the issue is only very rarely addressed. One important exception to this rule is Hoxby (1994). This paper uses instrumental variable econometric techniques to determine the independent effect of the existence of choice among public schools on per-pupil expenditure, educational productivity, average student performance, student educational attainment and post-graduation wages.Hoxby found strong evidence that increased parental choice availability led to improvement on each of these measures of educational performance. Hoxby also found that the existence of choice among public schools leads to more mixing of students by social class, race and ethnicity. This mixing, she found, did not hurt the scholastic performance of any group, but improved the performance of several groups, including white non-Hispanic males, and students of parents with at least a high school degree.Original language: EnglishHe has jointly authoredDemocracy and market: participation, accountability and efficiency (with Samuel Bowles and Bo Gustafsson, 1993). He is editor ofMacroeconomic policy after the conservative era: studies in investment, savings and finance (1995) and has written numerous journal articles. He is currently co-chair with Paul Romer of the MacArthur Foundation research project on The human side of economic analysis: economic environments and the evolution of norms and preferences.