Hoxby, C.M., (2003)

‘School choice and school competition – evidence from the U.S.’

Swedish Economic Policy Review 10, pp. 9-65

• A primer aiming to summarise the most recent answers to three common questions regarding school choice:


1. Do public schools respond constructively to competition by raising their own productivity?
- Hoxby uses evidence from three school choice programs (Milwaukee, Michigan and Arizona).
- For all three school choice systems Hoxby finds that competition raised productivity and achievement in public schools exposed to competition – schools improving relative to both their own pre-choice performance, and relative to other schools not subject to competition.
- Moreover, the greater the degree of competition, the greater the productivity gains.

2. Does students’ achievement rise when they attend voucher or charter schools?
- Hoxby presents evidence from six recent studies, the most striking result being that achievement gains appear to be restricted to black students, or groups largely composed of black students.
- However Hoxby maintains that the achievement question is ‘essentially wrong-headed’, as we should be concerned about productivity, and the effect of competition on public schools.

3. Do voucher and charter schools ‘cream-skim’?
- Hoxby notes that the theoretical findings regarding cream-skimming are mixed, and extremely sensitive to assumptions about the nature of the program and school behaviour.
- She finds that, if anything, charter schools are disproportionately drawing minority and under-achieving pupils. This is unsurprising (the schemes she studies were designed to target these groups) but makes the point that cream-skimming need not be a general outcome of choice programs.
- Hoxby concludes by enjoining researchers to ensure that they clearly describe the structure and incentives generated by choice programs they study, to avoid generating ‘a muddle of evidence’.

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