Education Privatization and School Choice

Final Exam Essay
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Final Exam Essay
Section A: Short Questions
Question 1
According to the Massachusetts Education Law of 1647, guardians, caregivers, and parents have a role in educating their kids. This education-related legislation was also referred to as the "Old Deluder Satan Act" after being approved in Massachusetts Bay in the 17th century (Parker, 1960). It expected areas with more than 50 families to form public schools. On the other hand, areas having fewer families were to enroll their kids in an adjacent area’s school. The requirement argued that the intention of forming schools was to enable “public and private happiness” and reduce ignorance among the children. Therefore, guardians, caregivers, and parents were responsible for caring for the children educationally.
Question 2
It is not correct that Milton Friedman perceived that a voucher plan would encourage class and racial segregation in learning institutions, intensify racial disagreements and promote separated communities. This is because Friedman was only an eminent economist who supported school vouchers (government-sponsored incentives to enable parents or guardians to select a school for their kids). Specifically, he claimed that these vouchers were meant to develop the education sector by intensifying competition among schools and allowing parents control over their kids’ learning. He also believed that students from marginalized groups accessing these vouchers would allow to get quality education and perform well in the long run (Friedman, 1973).
Question 3
It is true that keeping the marginal costs or expenses low requires monopolies to have a significant incentive to innovate. Unlike other firms operating in a competitive industry, monopolies never face the fear of facing competition because they solely provide their products and services in a less or no competitive environment (Davis & Orhangazi, 2021). Despite the unlikelihood of experiencing significant competition, monopolies still need to prioritize innovating, especially in this evolving world, to decrease their expenses and expand their profits considerably. For instance, a monopoly might need to capitalize on research and development to locate more relevant production or operational strategies that can reduce its marginal costs. The innovation might also allow the monopolies to sustain their industry dominance and remain ahead in case potential rivals pop up.
Question 4
It is correct that analyzing a voucher program's equilibrium effects would consider spillovers or the impact that the program poses on the overall economy. These programs always have several goals, including enhancing market effectiveness, intensifying access to specific services or products, etc. In the education setting, when a voucher program results in a rise in education services’ demand, it could stimulate a relative rise in these services’ prices. The action would affect people at individual and household levels, including those not utilizing the vouchers. Additionally, it could affect the education providers' behavior. They might react to the risen demand by increasing their capacity or providing more advanced services (Bettinger, 2011).
Question 5
It is correct that assessing the charter schools’ impact with a lottery-based design can allow generalizability to many settings. Firstly, a lottery-based design denotes a research design whereby study participants or samples are allotted randomly to a specific treatment control utilizing a lottery as a randomization method. Since this design largely relies on random allotment, it is easy to generalize to other settings where the same student populations are regarded for registration in the charter educational facilities. This implies that a study’s outcomes using the lottery-based design may be utilized to enlighten a policy in specific contexts whereby these schools are being executed. Above all, generalizability to many settings is increasingly possible.
Question 6
Honestly, it is uncertain whether education vouchers promote equity and efficiency. This is because the topic is controversial and some scholars and policymakers argue that the school voucher programs play a critical role in improving learner performance and outcomes, for instance through improved test scores, etc., and can be cost-effective overall compared to the traditional public learning entities (Ladd, 2002). However, some studies report that these voucher programs cause more harm than benefits and that they have less or no significance on the learners' academic outcomes. Others add that these programs can make other student groups, like the underprivileged to, be ignored. Therefore, the proof of the equity and efficiency of these programs is mixed and does not provide a clear picture of how important or bad they are.
Question 7
It is always correct that cream-skimming can encompass learning institutions selecting the best learners from various applicants looking forward to joining these institutions. The selection’s aim is to choose these learners because they have increased chances of prospering academically and contributing positively to these schools’ image and overall performance within the education sector. However, this concept might have undesirable consequences for the learners who are not chosen among the pool of applicants. Specifically, the action may lead to inequality and segregation within the education segment. Also, the schooling context can have less diverse environments, resulting in hardships concerning the learning settings. Generally, cream skimming is regarded as an irrelevant education practice that yields negative outcomes more than positive ones.
Question 8
It is accurate that Deborah Meier's public schooling model is reliant on encouraging choices between various small learning institutions. She is a believer in education reforms in small schools. She claimed that these schools could offer an increasingly personalized, engaging, and serene learning atmosphere for all learners. Meier’s argument is based on the notion that small institutions can promote innovation and collaboration to yield more positive impacts. According to her, small schools can solve problems such as segregation and stick to the "one size fits all" tactic in education (Meier, 1995).
Question 9
Besides reacting to existing competitions in the education sector by increasing efficiency, schools can still adopt other additional strategies that can also work well. The education system is competitive. Therefore, competitive mainly arising from educational providers can be a powerful tool driving these providers to enhance their services to maintain their market or industry share. Most importantly, other important strategies can include lowering their costs to attract more consumers. People always go for cheaper services and ignore expensive ones. Another strategy is investing in research and development to identify gaps and improve on them as a way to be unique and stand out. Some schools can gain a competitive advantage by partnering with other entities and offering appealing education services.
Question 10
It is false that Liberia's experience with public school management outsourcing behavior indicates that PPPs are a sure-shot to allow effective service delivery. Regarding the government in Liberia’s case, it outsourced public schools’ management to private firms with the motive of enhancing education quality within the country (Romero et al., 2020). However, the outcomes or findings of this strategy remained mixed. Some research established have found that privatizing schools in Liberia have resulted in massive progress regarding the students’ achievements, including the enrolment rates and test scores. However, other research only agrees that privatizing schools in Liberia and elsewhere has no or less influence on student outcomes. This means undesirable impacts on specific student groups.
Section B: Essay-Responses
Question 3
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have a useful purpose in the education sector in any country. However, low state capacity and insignificant governance or leadership can largely reduce PPPs' effectiveness. Specifically, PPPs refer to the effective coordination involving the private stakeholders (Non-Governmental entities, businesses, sponsors, etc.) and the public stakeholders (mainly the governments at national, regional, and local levels) (Tilak, 2010). The private and public entities contribute essential resources, skills, experience, and capital to realize a specific goal. PPPs in the education industry can offer educational services, create or remodel learning institutions, and channel infrastructure or resources for education. Despite all these potentials, PPPs are less likely to thrive in developing nations' environments than they would perform in developed nations that provide a serene setting. Developing states usually experience low state capacity and poor governance. These nations might lack the relevant functional policies, regulations, and frameworks to manage and support the partnerships. Moreover, when the leadership is weak, and the country experiences the lowest capacity, the country’s government may lack the capability to sufficiently negotiate, execute, and oversee the partnership agreements (Wang, 2019). This observation implies that the condition in the developing nation might cause poor consequences or significant failure of these PPPs. However, the partnerships can still be helpful tools to enhance education in developing states but might need extra capacity building and support to be effective.
Considering the existing literature, many different examples from the literature explain how the presence of low state capacity and insignificant governance or leadership can largely reduce PPPs’ effectiveness. As noted earlier, in developing nations experiencing weak leadership and reduced national capacity, the private-public partnerships in the education sector may not be as efficient and accommodating as they could be in the advanced states. The partnerships and their collaborative activities might require adequate resources and frameworks that these countries may lack. A great example is a study supported by World Bank establishing that in developing nations experiencing weak leadership and reduced national capacity, the private-public partnerships in education were considered to lack accountability and embrace the required full participation (Afridi, 2018). This causes the inevitable poor results and malfunctioning of the partnerships. Also, as mentioned, when the leadership is weak, and the country experiences the lowest capacity, the country's government may lack the capability to sufficiently negotiate, execute, and oversee the partnership agreements. For instance, a 2014 report from the International Institute for Educational Planning ascertained that PPPs in education from developing nations were always affected by costs, frequent delays, and inconsistency in quality. These three factors might negatively affect the partnership's effectiveness.
Romero, Sandefur, and Sandholtz (2020) support that countries (whether developed or developing) can get into PPPs as an approach to grow capital and perhaps leverage a private sector’s competence. However, most contracts may be incomplete; hence, commissioning public services to private ones may pose an allegedly ambiguous influence on service quality. As the private contractors might need robust incentives for cost-effectiveness for the civilians, they might as well reduce expenses via activities that are contractually allowed, though not in the public interest. The study highlights the Liberian government's case whereby in 2016, it passed on the control of 93 public education facilities to private entities. These entities received about $50 for each learner after an additional $50 for annual usage per student. Learners in outsourced institutions scored a higher grade after an academic year. Specifically, it was 0.18 times higher in Mathematics and English. The researchers did not get heterogeneity in the learning achievements or registration by learner features. However, there was considerable heterogeneity across the providers.
Question 5
There are relatively numerous theoretical channels through which school choice interventions or programs like the famous charter schools or vouchers greatly influence student prosperity in education. Mainly, the effect of school choice on the extent of learners' achievement in their educational endeavors varies greatly depending on the certain design and ...