Assessing School Choice: A balanced perspective

This article attempts to address the potential advantages and disadvantages of school choice. The author describes why school choice is attractive to parents, but raises concerns among educators. The extent to which choice programmes in the UK and the US attempt to allay these concerns is addressed. The author asserts that there is a dearth of research material adequately testing the effects of choice on academic achievement. He further claims that the nationwide data sets used by researchers probably fail to test whether school choice really enhances the academic achievement of the participants. While the author has doubts about how widespread an effect school choice can have, he believes further research is necessary before one can objectively evaluate the potential benefits that school choice can produce.