This study analyzes the effect of spatial competition on public schools' efficiency in Chile, an extreme case of market-oriented reforms in the educational sector. To address this issue, we use a measure of competition that captures three major characteristics of market competition in a spatial context: the number of competitors, based on distance…

The quantitative literature on parental reasons of school choice for their elementary school children was systematically reviewed using all major databases. The quality of the studies was assessed through a modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa scale. Among 3982 references reviewed, 26 studies were included from 14 countries. Although large…

Parents evaluate the reputations of the schools when making judgements about their desirability. They try to approximate the quality of schools and the social environment and contrast those with their hopes and fears concerning their child's education. We aim to clarify how the reputations of schools are constructed in Finland and Chile and what…

The superiority of market mechanisms in educational provision is a premise that has received renewed emphasis under the regime of public-private partnerships (PPPs). The central idea of PPPs--enthusiastically embraced by a range of international organizations, development agencies and scholars--is grounded in the assumption that competition…

"Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces" examines government funded public schools from a range of perspectives and scholarship in order to examine the historical, political and economic conditions of public schooling within a globalized, post-welfare context. In this book, Rowe argues that post-welfare policy conditions are…

This paper surveys the delivery of school education in Chile over the last half-century. It focuses on evidence provided by recent academic studies on the impact of neoliberal education policies introduced by the military regime in the 1980s, and continued by successive democratic governments. It offers insights into recent popular critiques of…

One of the pillars of the educational voucher system is that competition among schools to attract students would improve the quality of the education. Surveys to parents and previous work suggested that families rank the distance of the school from their home as the most important factor for choosing a school. They also suggest that parents…

There is persistent debate over the role of scale of operations in education. Some argue that school franchises offer educational services more effectively than small independent schools. Skeptics counter that large centralized operations create hard-to-manage bureaucracies and foster diseconomies of scale and that small schools are more effective…

This paper examines how schools choose class size and how households sort in response to those choices. Focusing on the highly liberalized Chilean education market, we develop a model in which schools are heterogeneous in an underlying productivity parameter, class size is a component of school quality, households are heterogeneous in income and…

The impact of competition on academic outcomes is likely to depend on whether parents are informed about schools' effectiveness or valued added (which may or may not be correlated with absolute measures of their quality), and on whether this information influences their school choices, thereby affecting schools' market outcomes. To explore these…

"School Choice: The Findings" is the most comprehensive and up-?to-?date survey available, summarizing the research on charter schools, vouchers, and public versus private school effectiveness, from one of the country's most distinguished education scholars. The focus is on rigorous studies--those using randomized control groups (as in…

Standardized test scores were compared for three types of Chilean schools: public, private financed with voucher-like subsidies, and fee-paying private. Raw scores were much higher in private fee-paying schools. There were no significant differences between scores in public schools and subsidized private schools. (SK)

The voucher model of financing schooling is becoming increasingly common throughout Latin America, with at least 12 countries using vouchers or voucher-like schemes. The present study focuses on the voucher models of Colombia and Chile, which have the most extensive programs of this type and those of the longest standing in the region. Using…

Examines national experiences with educational vouchers in Chile and Sweden in relation to commonly held assumptions of proponents and opponents. Finds that vouchers did not improve academic achievement; "flight from public education" was related to prior lack of public support for public education; increased choice primarily benefited…