In 1989 New Zealand embarked on what is arguably the most
thorough and dramatic transformation of a compulsory state
education system ever undertaken by an industrialized country.
Under a plan known as Tomorrow's Schools this island nation of 3.8
million people abolished its national Department of Education and
turned control of its nearly 2,700 primary and secondary schools
over to locally elected boards of trustees. Virtually overnight,
one of the world's most tightly controlled public education systems
became one of the most decentralized. Two years later, in 1991,
with a new government in power, New Zealand enacted further reforms
that introduced full parental choice of schools and encouraged the
development of a competitive culture in the state education system.
Debate rages in the United States about whether similar reforms
would improve the performance of the country's troubled public
school system. Judgments about the potential benefits of these
ideas, as well as the general relevance of economic models to
educational systems, tap into deeply held values, and discussion in
the U.S. has been hampered by the lack of practical experience with
them. The extended and widespread experiences of New Zealand, whose
school system functions much like our own, provide U.S. policy
makers with a wide range of appropriate insights and implications
to consider as they gauge the merits of bold education reform. When
Schools Compete is the first book to provide detailed quantitative
and qualitative analysis of the New Zealand experiment. Combining
the perceptive observations of a prominent education journalist and
the analytical skills of an academic policy analyst, this book will
help supporters and critics of market-based education reforms
better anticipate the potential long-term consequences of applying
ideas of market competition to the delivery of education.
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