Here’s another study showing the benefits of comprehensive school choice in a foreign country. Interestingly, the author of the report about the Chilean system clearly is not a fan of competition, yet even his data shows higher scores for private schools and rising overall scores, even in the government schools – which is exactly what one would expect since competition encourages every type of school to do a better job:
- Chile’s education system was decentralized in 1980, and a voucher-type subsidy was introduced to encourage private providers to enter the market. …Following the reform…, the subsidized private sector rapidly expanded…with 56 percent of enrollments in the municipal sector and 34 percent in subsidized private schools. The fee-paying private sector has expanded…to account for 10 percent of total enrollment. …test results have tended to improve over time, especially at 4th grade, but there are significant differences…fee-paying private schools on average score 19 more points than municipal schools in the SIMCE test, whereas subsidized private schools score 4.5 more.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/146331?seq=8
