Competition in Schools
John Stossel has a few things to saw about how competition would make schools better.
In 2001, Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby found that Milwaukee’s private school vouchers made the nearby public schools (which were competing for the same students) change. “[Public] school principals were allowed to have a lot more autonomy,” she said, “They counseled teachers out of teaching altogether who really weren’t performing or showing up on the job — they put in new back to basics curricula in some primary schools that really needed that so that reading skills and math skills would go up.” Test results at those public schools went up by 7.1 percent in math, 8.4 percent in science, and 3.0 percent in language. Scores went up in voucher schools, too.
Full article here.