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

Benefits Undermined

Perhaps the most important lesson that New Zealand's experiment with the educational marketplace has to offer to the United States and other developed countries has to do with the creation of winners and losers. That's exactly what competition is supposed to do--create winners and losers.

New Zealand's experience suggests that it is dangerous--even morally wrong--to organize a state education system in such a way that you know from the outset that, if the system works the way it is supposed to work, you will do great harm to some schools and families. Such a system might be justified if competition meant that all schools improved and winning and losing was relative, but this was certainly not the case in South Auckland.

Alternatively, such a system might be tenable if central authorities, knowing that some schools would soon start spiraling downward, stood ready to come to the aid of them and the families they served and to do so sooner rather than, as in New Zealand's case, later. Such an approach would, of course, undermine some of the alleged benefits of competition by lowering the price of failure.

The situation in the Upper Hutt Valley demonstrates that parental choice and competition among schools for students can have an energizing effect on public schools, but the plight of schools in South Auckland shows the other side of the coin. Whatever its benefits, the competitive model cannot be counted on to solve the problems of schools serving substantial numbers of disadvantaged students. To the contrary, it will exacerbate these problems.

Edward Fiske, former education editor of The New York Times. is a free-lance writer and consultant. Helen Ladd is a professor of public policy and economics at the Terry Sanford Institute at Duke University. Their book, When Schools Compete: A Cautionary Tale, was published earlier this year by The Brookings Institution Press.