Market Driven Reform

Exploring a controversial issue in education series ... Market Driven Reform

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Background

The driving force behind market-driven school reform is competition, which, in a free market system, is supposed to result in efficiency and quality. When applied to education, market-driven reform seeks to create schools that are more responsive to the external environment because their funding is based on accountability and achieving quantifiable performance objectives.

According to the market-driven reform model, the managers (administrators) are responsible for the performance of the organization (the school) and are rewarded for their efficiency and the quality of their product (the students) with more resources. Charter schools are considered by many in the education-reform movement to be an example of market-driven schools.

Vouchers, tax credits and performance-based funding programs are also considered to be ways to encourage the development of such schools.

Beliefs

Supporters of market-driven reform believe that

subjecting public schools to market forces will compel them to be more responsive to parents and students,
competition between schools should be central because it will ensure efficiency and quality, competition between schools for limited resources will increase achievement and accountability,
market-driven schools will expand opportunities for students by improving choice, and
market-driven schools will be more efficient, thereby lowering the cost of education to the government and, ultimately, the taxpayer.

Considerations

Critics of the market-driven approach to reform believe that

emphasis on accountability, on results alone, is detrimental to large numbers of students and is a very simplistic way of looking at education;
schools operating within a market system are encouraged to focus their efforts exclusively on achieving measured goals and will ignore other important aspects of learning that cannot be easily reduced to simple numbers;
the emphasis on competition increases the inequalities between the have and the have-not schools; and
competition diverts classroom dollars to advertising and marketing.

A Closer Look

The concept of market-driven school reform derives from a political and economic theory linking public choice to performance and resources. In Alberta, this approach gained some popularity in the mid-1990s as part of a movement claiming that increased school choice would result in a more dynamic, innovative and equitable system.

In an extensive review of the research on the impact of school choice in England, Wales, the United States, New Zealand and Sweden (documented in Devolution and Choice in Education: The School, the State and the Market, Open University Press 1998), British researchers concluded that the market-oriented approach led to "good" schools, choosing "good" students, usually those who are academically and socially advantaged, while "failing" schools were thrown into a steady decline.

There is mounting evidence that reducing class size, increasing early childhood education and improving teaching conditions will produce far more beneficial results for far more students than implementing market-driven reforms.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association