Public choice is an idea that is gaining support as a policy option for the nation's schools. Advocates of choice argue decoupling education from the control of democratic institutions and substituting a market mechanism will promote effective schools. This paper analyzes the underlying premises of the public choice argument and empirically tests them on a district-level data set of Florida schools. The relationships hypothesized by public choice advocates to be important determinants of performance often fail to appear. The results raise questions about the effectiveness of the public choice policy option.
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Kevin B. Smith (1994) studied this question.
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