Prepared for a Strategic Education Governance learning seminar, this working paper analyses the ways in which the Dutch government tried to reach overarching goals in education, in a system characterised by a high degree of distributed autonomy of education institutions and the participation of multiple actors, and consequently a government highly…

In the Netherlands, school choice is free and all schools are equally funded by the government. We measured distance from home to school as a proxy for the selectivity of choice and used characteristics of the nearest school to explain the choice of a school other than the nearest school. Almost 89% of all pupils in the 4 largest cities do not…

One of the key features of the Dutch education system is freedom of education--freedom to establish schools and organize teaching. Almost 70 percent of schools in the Netherlands are administered by private school boards, and all schools are government funded equally. This allows school choice. Using an instrument to identify school choice, it is…

Although a relatively new idea in the U.S., weighted student funding (WSF) for individual schools has a long history in the Netherlands. This country of about 16.5 million people has been using a version of WSF for all its primary schools (serving children from age 4 to 12) for 25 years. In this article we describe and evaluate the Dutch system…

In recent years, policy makers and educators in the U.S. have begun to show considerable interest in the concept of weighted student funding as a means of financing primary and secondary schools. Weighted student funding (WSF) has three main elements. Money follows students on a per student basis to the schools they attend, the per student amount…

Policy makers and educators in the U.S. have recently shown considerable interest in the concept of weighted student funding (WSF) as a means of financing primary and secondary schools. WSF appeals both to conservatives, who see it as a way to promote parental choice and school autonomy, and to progressives, who are attracted by the call of extra…

Current educational reforms encompass increasing freedom of parental choice. Parental choice is seen as a stimulus for school improvement and school quality control. One of the central thoughts behind freedom of parental choice is that the quality of education will increase when the educational system has to act using market mechanisms, in which…

"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…

Private education and comparisons between private and public education at the collegiate and elementary/secondary levels are discussed in 11 articles. Attention is directed to relationships between private choice and public policy as they affect the quality, finance, governance, mission, and division of labor in a cross-national, interdisciplinary…