The Empty Aisles of Marketplace Reform - free choice of school as means to improve education

School Administrator, Nov, 2000 by Edward B. Fiske, Helen F. Add

When his tactics became known, Lee was roundly criticized by fellow principals. He later admitted that sneaking the mailing list was inappropriate behavior and assured the principal of Taita that he would not do it again. As for the busses, though, he remained unrepentant. "I was appointed to turn around a school," he told us. "If I have to raid Stokes Valley, I'll do it. It's the market working. I don't particularly like the system, but it's the one I'm in, so I'll work it.

Popular or not, Lee's marketing and recruiting efforts paid off, and by 1998 enrollment at Upper Hutt, not counting foreign students, had crept back up to 829.

In spite of the flap about Lee's marketing methods, competition in the Upper Hutt Valley appears to have had an energizing effect. Students and parents took seriously their new right to select among competing secondary schools, and the resulting reversal of fortunes of the two institutions can be seen as a textbook example of an educational marketplace at work.

As Lee describes the new competitive environment, "One of the advantages of Tomorrow's Schools is that it sharpens your focus. It makes you more conscious about the need to deliver quality education." Indeed, it may well be the case that the quality of education has gone up in many schools, although that cannot be quantified because New Zealand does not have a comprehensive national testing system.

Uneven Rules of Play

One factor that fostered vigorous competition in the Upper Hutt Valley is that the two schools were competing on a relatively level playing field. Elsewhere, however, the playing field is not so level. One place where it most certainly is not level is South Auckland.

South Auckland is a low-income area of New Zealand's largest city that shares most of the social pathology of distressed urban areas. A high proportion of residents are Maori and Pacific Islanders, many of the latter being recent immigrants with poor English skills. Health problems are rampant. The violence, alcohol and drug abuse, lack of self-esteem and other problems that characterize the area were powerfully depicted in Maori writer Alan Duff's novel and subsequent film Once Were Warriors.

Schools in South Auckland are characterized by low achievement, high dropout rates and other problems associated with poverty, and much effort goes into simply trying to keep pupils fit to learn. At Tamaki College, for example, health problems such as iron deficiency and high cholesterol levels are rampant among students, and a high percentage of students arrive without having had breakfast.

To deal with such issues, the school set up the Puna Waiora Health Center in a renovated classroom building. The center, whose name means Healing Spring, houses three fulltime staff members--a guidance counselor, a social worker and a nurse--and is financed jointly by the school, the Ministry of Education and social welfare agencies. A family physician visits the school on Wednesdays. The center runs regular programs aimed at managing anger and raising student self-esteem, and the three staff workers work together to identify and deal with problems such as violence or sexual abuse in the home, in some cases making referrals to the judicial system.