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Essay on Public School Choice Improves Student Achievement

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School Choice Improves Student Achievement

In his new budget, President Obama proposed to substantially increase federal spending to improve public schools. Yet steady spending increases of the last three decades resulted in little change in the poor achievement of students that worries many citizens. Much research, however, shows that what works well is parental choice among schools fairly competing for students as in the case of traditional, tuition-based private schools. Rigorous studies comparing students randomly selected or not to oversubscribed private and charter schools as well as large, statistically controlled surveys show that these schools excel in achievement and parental satisfaction.

Surveys show the majority of …show more content…

Viewing charter schools as competitors to the schools they run directly and under teachers union pressures, district school boards further restrict charter schools. Viewing them as competitors, they impose dysfunctional regulations on charter schools and deny applications for new ones. For these reasons, the numbers of charter schools have stopped growing at their initial fast pace.

Unions, public school authorities, and legislators have even more successfully resisted even successful school vouchers that provide scholarships for parents to send their children to independent or parochial schools. The advantages of vouchers are that they largely bypass the dysfunctional regulations and practices of the public sector and allow parents to choose the schools most suitable for their children, which they best know and care about.

Large-scale studies, moreover, show that the higher the percentage of students attending private and charter schools within states, the higher the average achievement of all students. Studies of countries show the same pattern; the greater the percentage of students attending private schools, the higher the country’s achievement. As shown in comparisons of public and private provision of services in many industries, private competition works well for consumers, allows successful contenders to thrive, and causes failing organizations to change or close.

The next logical step in school choice is for-profit

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