Why Options and Competition in Education?
From the Internet Education Exchange (iEDx)Can competition among schools, sparked by increased education options, truly improve the quality of American education?
The answer is "Yes" if America's vast experience with competition in a vast number of instances and cases is a guide.
Healthy competition has worked to improve the quality and variety of goods and services in all other areas of our lives - and it can do the same for educating America's children. Competition, after all, has worked in higher education, making America's systems of public, private and parochial colleges and universities the envy of the world. Publicly funded students attend each of these types of schools, and the schools compete aggressively for these students. Popular financial aid programs help make this competition possible.
Healthy competition has worked to improve the quality and variety of goods and services in all other areas of our lives - and it can do the same for educating America's children. Competition, after all, has worked in areas such as higher education, supermarkets and computers to name just a few.
Higher Education - competition has made America's public, private and parochial colleges and universities the envy of the world. Publicly funded students attend each of these types of schools, and the schools compete aggressively for these students. Popular financial aid programs help make this competition possible.
Supermarkets - competition brings us variety and reasonable prices at the market where we buy food, including products that cater to all tastes, from the familiar to the exotic, stores located near competitors that offer home delivery, hot food and other services to win and keep customers and stores that watch and match each other's prices and practices.
Computers - competition has spawned a vast array of computers that have revolutionized modern life. Just yesterday, a single computer could occupy an entire room and had to be operated by specialists. Now people work, play and communicate with home computers. There's hardly an area of human life, from managing family finances to contacting friends across the globe, that hasn't been enhanced by devices and software created by companies racing each other to meet consumers' needs.
America has had more than two centuries' experience with competition. Americans have found repeatedly that competition drives the innovation that satisfies a wide variety of needs and preferences.
An exception has been America's K-12 schools. To be sure, America's public schools have done a good job of educating children from disparate cultures, speaking a wide variety of languages. But there has been little competition spurring the schools to do better, to innovate, to adapt - and above all, to reach their potential. While all schools can improve, the need has never been so great and the performance gap so large as in many of today's inner city and rural and remote schools.
While the public schools serve many children very well, other children likely would benefit from alternatives both public and private. Our children aren't clones of one another, and some of them may thrive on approaches different than the usual methods of schooling.
Limited competition in America's elementary and secondary education has already proven beneficial to the public schools. A recent study by Clive R. Belfield of Columbia University, reviewing 13 studies on school competition, finds: (a) "Competition raises [public school] test scores, but with no additional expenditures;" and (b) Competition between schools increases teacher salaries and slightly boosts future earnings for students.
That's strong evidence that competition can be as effective in improving the quality of America's K-12 schools as it has been in all other areas of the nation's life - including higher education. All that is needed is for lawmakers and policymakers to listen when parents and others ask for the ability to try new ways and options to educate their children.
When that happens, as it is increasingly in communities across the nation, competition in education will be ignited and schooling options will proliferate in forms that surely will be as surprising to the parents, teachers and students of today as Web-surfing and budget-management software would have been to the computer users of three decades ago.