Christopher Lubienski

School choice and competitive incentives: Mapping the distribution of educational opportunities across local education markets

Competition sparked by school choice is expected to generate greater educational opportunities, particularly for disadvantaged students. The premise is that competitive incentives will change the organizational behavior of schools (and districts, dioceses, etc.) in ways that will lead to more equitable access for students across varied and often segregated urban landscapes. Drawing from theories of institutional environments and nonprofit firms, this analysis investigates patterns of access across three highly competitive local education markets to determine how school choices are arranged as options expand. The findings indicate that competitive incentives can have similar impacts on different types of organizations, but both policy variations and contextual factors such as demographic distributions may also play critical roles in shaping the market structures in which schools operate. Notably, all three cases showed patterns of exclusionary strategies that schools embraced to enhance market position.

School Sector and Academic Achievement: A Multilevel Analysis of NAEP Mathematics Data

Using data from the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, this analysis compared mathematics achievement in public, charter, and major types of private schools to examine whether disparities in achievement are due to differences in school performance or student demographics in various sectors. Hierarchical linear models were used to control for student- and school-level demographic characteristics. The analysis indicated that the relatively high raw scores of private schools were more than accounted for by student demographics. In fact, after demographic differences had been controlled, the private school advantage disappeared and even reversed in most cases. These findings raise questions about the basis of reform models that seek remedies in parental choice, autonomy, competition, and other attributes associated with the private school sector.

Marketing Schools Consumer Goods and Competitive Incentives for Consumer Information

Effective school-choice plans depend on the quality of information available to families. Examining the promotional materials provided by different schools in a highly competitive and diverse urban area tells us not only about the quality of that information but also how schools respond to competitive incentives. This analysis outlines an economic theory of goods as a framework for understanding information, focusing on the essential “search,” “experience,” and “credence” qualities of promotional materials. The information made available to families through commercial-style materials challenges the notion of parents making reasoned choices based on institutional effectiveness. Instead, more emotional themes and images dominate school marketing strategies, with implications for ethnic and socioeconomic sorting within diverse but competitive climates. Promotional strategies suggest that competition is creating an environment in which, rather than responding to incentives intended to improve education for more disadvantaged students, schools are instead attracting better performing students through their marketing campaigns.

Is There a “Consensus” on School Choice and Achievement? Advocacy Research and the Emerging Political Economy of Knowledge Production

A number of school choice advocates claim that there is a research consensus indicating that vouchers for private schools lead to higher academic achievement. The authors review and critique these local studies of voucher programs, contrasting them with findings from larger-scale analyses of nationally representative samples of public and private schools, which illuminate patterns that appear to undercut the assumption of superior private school performance that is a premise of voucher programs. The authors note limitations inherent in different methodological approaches to this question, focusing on the shortcomings of randomization as an exclusive “gold standard” for research on the issue of achievement in school choice plans. The concluding discussion reconsiders the question of a consensus, highlighting the emerging research environment that bypasses traditional review processes and emphasizes instead the promotion of ideas to support policy agendas.

Achievement Differences and School Type: The Role of School Climate, Teacher Certification, and Instruction.

Recent analyses challenge common wisdom regarding the superiority of private schools relative to public schools, raising questions about the role of school processes and climate in shaping achievement in different types of schools. While holding demographic factors constant, this multilevel analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics data on over 270,000 fourth and eighth graders in over 10,000 schools examines differences among schools on five critical factors: (1) school size, (2) class size, (3) school climate/parental involvement, (4) teacher certification, and (5) instructional practices. This study provides nationally representative evidence that both teacher certification and some reform‐oriented mathematics teaching practices correlate positively with achievement and are more prevalent in public schools than in demographically similar private schools. Additionally, smaller class size, more prevalent in private schools, is significantly correlated with achievement.

The Institutional Landscape of Interest Group Politics and School Choice

This article provides an updated analysis of the institutional and organizational landscape surrounding the advocacy of and opposition to vouchers and other forms of school choice over the past decade at federal/national, state, and local levels. The politics of choice grew far more complex during the 1990s, with Republican control of Congress and the White House, the growth of the national charter school movement, congressional passage of pilot voucher programs, and the Supreme Courts 2002 Zelman v. Simmons-Harris ruling. Utilizing an Advocacy Coalition Framework, questions about the ideological motivations behind different forms of school choice, the particular programs that certain groups are likely to support or oppose, and the strategies—including the potential alliances and coalitions—that are increasingly employed around school choice policy are explored. A framework for understanding and analyzing policymaking in this area is offered, extending existing thinking on both school choice issues and education policy more generally.

Intermediary Organizations in Charter School Policy Coalitions Evidence From New Orleans

This article develops a framework for investigating research use, using an “advocacy coalition framework” and the concepts of a “supply side” (mainly organizations) and “demand side” (policymakers). Drawing on interview data and documents from New Orleans about the charter school reforms that have developed there since 2005, the authors examine (a) the role of intermediaries in producing information and research syntheses for local, state, and/or federal policymakers; (b) the extent of policymakers’ demand for such research and information; and (c) the extent to which local and national coalitions of organizations appear to be influential in research use. The article concludes that there are two coalitions in New Orleans that differ in their interpretations of charter school performance, equity, and access; that there is overall very low research capacity within the intermediary sector; and that there is little evidence of demand from state policymakers for research findings. There was agreement across both coalitions that there is a lack of a credible and non-partisan research group studying the reforms, that is, one that produces data analyses that are not merely descriptive. The authors map preliminary findings about how intermediary organizations are connected to national groups, as well as how research is shared within coalitions.

School Diversification in Second-Best Education Markets International Evidence and Conflicting Theories of Change

According to theorists, choice and competition are intended to force schools to innovate and diversify their programs. However, evidence from several countries suggests that schools are not responding to competitive incentives as expected: (a) instead of innovating in the classroom, schools often embrace traditional practices; (b) innovations in administration tend to enable schools to more effectively shape their enrollment, rather than pursue more effective or diverse educational practices; and (c) public-sector policies, not competitive pressures, produced the most innovative and diversified options for families. The analysis considers the predominant theoretical perspective on organizational change, and points to difficulties in applying this reasoning to education. Instead, the article suggests a more complex understanding of market processes in education. The peculiar nature of public education as a “second-best” market corrupts the incentives intended by reforms that impose market-style competition on schools.

A New Look at Public and Private Schools: Student Background and Mathematics Achievement.

The claim that private schools do a better job of educating their students than public schools -- an argument central to the push for market-style reforms -- is rarely questioned. But do the data back it up? The authors examined fourth- and eighth-grade NAEP mathematics achievement in over 1,000 public and private schools to arrive at a surprising answer. A RECENT report of mathematics results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) highlighted this major finding: Public- school students scored lower on average than non-public-school students at both grades 4 and 8.1 Of course, this finding is nothing new. Indeed, it is part of the common wisdom in the United States that private school students outscore public school students on standardized tests. Furthermore, studies have suggested that this is true even when researchers account for the fact that the enrollment at public schools differs from the enrollment at private schools. This belief is based, in part, on past studies involving the 1980 High School and Beyond dataset that found that private schools are more effective than public schools at boosting student achievement, including that of disadvantaged students.2 These studies of test performance, which controlled for some potentially confounding variables such as socioeconomic status (SES), affirmed widespread assumptions about the superiority of private schools. These assumptions, in turn, have influenced recent reform efforts promoting various forms of privatization of public schools, including the No Child Left Behind Act, which makes use of a variety of private sector sanctions for failing public schools. However, the seminal studies on private school effects are becoming dated, with most based on a sample of students who began school over a generation ago. In addition, most of these studies were limited to high school.3 Some used rough measures of SES that may not have been sufficiently sensitive to the differences in populations served by public and private schools. Given the current interest in choice and privatization, it is an important time to examine current evidence relating to achievement in public and private schools. While undertaking a broader study of mathematics instruction and equity, we became intrigued by an unexpected finding: when controlling for private school status and student background variables in our statistical models, we saw that mathematics achievement in public schools actually appeared higher than that in private schools.4 We decided to do a special substudy focusing specifically on achievement differences between public and private schools. Using a powerful SES variable created for the broader study, we were able to more carefully examine the question of whether the widely assumed private school effect is due more to the population of students served than to institutional effectiveness. The study focused solely on student achievement in mathematics -- a subject generally thought to be less influenced by family background and more influenced by institutional effects than other school subjects such as literacy. The Role of Family Background NAEP has been an important tool for monitoring trends in U.S. student achievement. It is the only nationally representative, ongoing assessment of U.S. academic achievement, measuring student performance at fourth, eighth, and 12th grades in mathematics and other subject areas. Our study used fourth- and eighth-grade data; eliminating 12th- grade data removed the issue of high school dropouts, which could bias our samples. Furthermore, the focus on students in the earlier grades reduces the likelihood that the students in the sample had transferred between public and private schools. We analyzed achievement and survey data from the 2000 Main NAEP mathematics assessment,5 which we obtained from a restricted-use CD-ROM. (When the study was conducted in 2004, the 2000 assessment was the most recent for which raw data were available to researchers. …

The Politics of Research Production, Promotion, and Utilization in Educational Policy

Researchers have noted with concern the often weak link between research evidence and policymaking, particularly in some areas such as education. In this introductory essay—dedicated to the late Carol Weiss—we consider this issue first by reflecting on how changing historical conditions can shape institutional demands on and for research production, promotion, and use. This leads to the questions: How can institutions use evidence on different policy options? How do policymakers and other information consumers sort through competing claims? Are new processes and institutions emerging to shape research use? In view of the current calls from public policymakers in the government and private policymakers in philanthropies for rigorous research on the effectiveness of policy interventions, we compare the relative role of research use in education policy to other issues, such as climate science, and highlight the growing role of intermediate actors as they shape research use. And we consider some common characteristics of these policy issues that may contribute to misuse or disuse, as well as to greater consideration of research. We offer an overview of the understanding of research use in education and point to the need to explore new theoretical frameworks and methodologies. The essay ends with an overview of the papers in the issue.