School Competition One strategy for improving K-12 education…
School Competition One strategy for improving K-12 education is for government to provide families with vouchers that they can use to pay for any school (public or private) of their choosing. The hope is that competition will cause schools to increase their effectiveness (or value added) in helping children learn. This is because families will migrate away from schools with low value added and towards schools with high value added. Unfortunately, empirical analysis of voucher systems has found mixed results. In some settings, vouchers have boosted learning (e.g., Colombia), while in others they have actually caused it to decline (e.g., Louisiana). Explain this disparate set of results. Under what conditions will competition cause schools to increase their value added? How is it possible that this happens in some settings but not others?
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