Working Papers

In 1983 the Indian state of West Bengal abolished the teaching of English at the primary level from public schools, narrowing the curriculum to the other subjects then taught. The objective of this intervention - a lowering of the existing academic standards - was to make primary education more accessible, particularly for poorer and rural children, who at that time had low enrollment and high dropout rates. Using two large data sets from India and a difference-in-differences strategy, I investigate the effect of this unusual policy on educational outcomes in West Bengal. I find that there was a positive and significant effect of the policy on subsequent educational attainment, and that this was larger for children from poorer families. However, there was simultaneously a large increase in expenditure on private tutoring. This suggests that families who could afford to do so were supplementing the skills of their children by private purchases, since in a multilingual country like India, a knowledge of a common lan- guage like English has significant benefits later in life, both in the labor market and otherwise.

Education is an essential pre-requisite and basic building block for social capital formation. Pakistan is the sixth most populous country with 160 million people, 33% mired in abject poverty, living below the poverty line. Pakistan is at serious risk of not attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Education For All (EFA) targets by 2015. Government alone will not be able to accomplish the gigantic task of attaining the goal of sustainable quality education and meet the targets of MDGs and EFA. Policy change is necessary to involve and facilitate Non-State Providers for extending access, equity and quality. There is greater sensitivity now to facilitate private sector intervention by financial, administrative and management empowerment and autonomous academic leadership through Public Private Partnership (PPP). The idea is to ensure trust-based synergy and synchronization culminating in a longeval win-win situation. The evidence has suggested that PPP is extremely successful. The central thematic area explored in the paper involves how robust PPP models are in terms of affordability and sustainability. The paper elucidates on evidence-based research findings with multi-dimensional contents and contours. The findings are based on actual data and practices in operational theatrics in the context of PPP models in the largest province of Punjab under the auspices of Punjab Education Foundation (PEF). By now, there is irrefutable and convincing supporting empirical evidence that PPP carries very secure potential not only for long-term viability but also for sustainable quality education at affordable cost to the less-privileged and disenfranchised sections of society. Efficient private sector leadership facilitated by public sector financing securely integrates and bleeds into an optimal level of service delivery, resulting in better learning outcomes, less drop-outs, ensured presence of teachers and no truancy.

Proponents of charter schools claim that charters provide incentives for non-charter public schools to provide more effort towards improving student performance. However, it is unclear whether schools respond to competition and other mechanisms may counteract competitive impacts. In this paper I investigate how charter schools affect behavior, attendance, and test scores for students in non-charter schools using new data from an anonymous large urban school district (ALUSD). I compare three econometric methods which attempt to account for the endogenous location decision of charter schools - school fixed-effects, school fixed-effects combined with school-specific time-trends, and instrumental variables. Results using school fixed effects with or without school specific time trends suggest that impacts on test scores are statistically insignificant in levels models but significantly positive in value-added models. On the other hand, IV results show consistently negative, and often statistically significant, impacts of charter schools on test scores in both levels and value-added models. However, I also find large and statistically significant improvements in discipline in schools facing charter competition that also differ from the fixed-effects estimates. These results suggest that previous work on this topic may suffer from substantial selection bias.

This study examines the mathematics performance of students in public, Catholic, and other private schools. In view of widespread interest in private models for education organization, it is important to understand the impact of different school models on students’ academic achievement. Drawing on a representative sample of 23,000 4 th- and 8 th -grade students in 1,340 public and private schools, this analysis confirms that private school students, on average, scored substantially higher than their public school counterparts. However, contrary to previous studies, this HLM analysis found that the performance of students in Catholic and other private schools actually falls significantly below that of public school students when accounting for SES, race, and disability status differences in the populations of these schools. At this time when market-style reforms are changing the public school landscape, this study offers fresh evidence that challenges common assumptions about the general superiority of private schools.

The economic model of education policy assumes a substantial consensus for a common set of educational goals. Unfortunately, such agreement rarely exists in the construction of real world reforms. In the case of educational vouchers, this problem is exacerbated by multiple goals and a lack of credible evidence, which neither supports nor refutes program effectiveness. Research has become a venue for competing ideologies and we conclude that the frenzied search for evidence on the impact of vouchers on student achievement is a charade that will not settle the debate. The primary conflict is between what we term libertarian and social contract positions. Libertarians believe freedom of choice should be the highest priority of voucher reforms and assume that increased options will promote greater efficiency and (possibly) equity. Advocates for a social contract maintain that education generates important positive externalities that are best promoted through a free, publicly-funded and democratically determined system. The following paper contends that evaluations must openly acknowledge and account for competing beliefs. We define a comprehensive framework of analysis that employs four criteria– freedom of choice, efficiency, equity, and social cohesion–to analyze the regulation, finance, and social services provisions of individual voucher programs. Our framework allows policy makers to gauge desired outcomes and understand the tradeoffs that choice reforms entail, especially when evidence is limited. This article was also published in the American Journal of Education, 111, August 2005.

This paper summarizes the trend toward introducing markets into the education sector. We begin with a brief history of the market reforms and then review recent policy developments related to vouchers, charter schools, tuition tax credits, and educational management organizations. The internal anatomy of markets is then described, recognizing both the possibility of imperfect competition and of market failure. Next, we set out a framework for evaluating market reforms which has four criteria – freedom of choice; productive efficiency; equity; and social cohesion – and a set of three policy instruments – finance, regulation, and support services. We then show how voucher policies can differ considerably in how they satisfy each of the four criteria, although unavoidably trade-offs must be made. We then review the evidence on vouchers and choice in relation to each of the four criteria. Finally, we consider what are the prospects for market approaches to education and where are the needs for further research.

Listed below are frequently asked questions (FAQs) and answers to six topics of focus:

1. What are charter school ?

2. What are home-schools ?

3. What are educational vouchers ?

4. What are for-profit schools ?

5. What are private schools ?

6. What are tuition tax-credits ?
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Professor Pearl Kane interviews Professor Milton Friedman about education privatization. Professor Friedman proposed education vouchers in his book Capitalism and Freedom , published in 1962. He has been an energetic advocate of vouchers and freedom of choice in schooling.

This paper quantifies the religious factor in education demand by calibrating a political economy model of education finance and school choice in which parents who differ in the advantage they attribute to religious education choose from among public, private-nonsectarian and religious schools. The calibrated distribution of religious preferences indicates that the revealed advantage of religious education is strongly contingent on its high levels of subsidization. The results of the calibration are applied to compare the effect of publicly funded vouchers that do not exclude religious schools—to which the Supreme Court recently opened a door in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris—with vouchers restricted to nonsectarian schools. It supports the implicit conclusion of the Court, that participation of religious schools in the Cleveland voucher program was essential for achieving its goal of helping low-income parents in a failing school district. Larger vouchers would have reduced the share of religious schools in the program, though they would still have attracted a majority of students.

<Now published in (2002) Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(3), 159-174>
Major policy debates have arisen around the subject of educational vouchers as an alternative for financing and organizing the educational system. To a large degree comparisons between vouchers and the traditional system of educational finance and school operations have been limited to one or two dimensions of education such as the
relative impact of a particular system on achievement test scores. This paper describes a comprehensive, evaluative framework that draws upon a larger range of goals that have been posed for education in a democratic and free society. These criteria include: (1) freedom of choice; (2) productive efficiency; (3) equity; and (4) social cohesion. The
framework demonstrates the importance of and tradeoffs among these four criteria in evaluating specific educational voucher plans and comparing them to other alternatives such as charter schools as well as the more traditional public school arrangement. The paper develops the concept of "advantage maps" for comparative purposes along with a
research agenda for developing fully this approach to evaluation.

Now published in (1999) The American Behavioral Scientist

Although explicit public-private partnerships are rare in education, there is a close connection between the public and private goals of education. Education inherently serves both public and private interests. It addresses public interests by preparing the young to assume adult roles that promote civic responsibility, embrace a common set of economic and political values, and share a common language. Education serves private interests in promoting individual development, understanding, and productivity that contribute to adult productivity and well-being. Unfortunately, educational policy may find itself in conflict while simultaneously serving both public and private mandates. This article reviews that challenge and presents a variety of ways on which public and private sectors collaborate educationally. It focuses most fully on the issues that arise from recent proposals for educational vouchers in which public resources would be used to promote and fund schools in the private marketplace.