Research & Policy Brief
November 2016
Privatization or Public Investment in Education? By Frank Adamson
About This Brief This brief presents key findings and policy recommendations from Global Education Reform: How Privatization and Public Investment Influence Education Outcomes. Learn more at https://edpolicy.stanford. edu/GlobalEdReform This research was made possible by the Open Society Foundations.
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olicymakers worldwide are trying to figure how best to organize, govern, and support their education systems. They must manage multiple goals, such as workforce development, nurturing knowledgeable citizens, and ensuring educational opportunity. Some countries approach these issues with a public investment in teacher professionalization and a focus on equity of student outcomes, while others use a market-based, privatization approach to education. The findings in this brief compare pairs of countries using these two different approaches. The data suggest that the education sector is better served by a public investment approach that supports each and every child than by a market-based, competition approach that creates winners…and losers. While competition might work in sports leagues, countries should not create education systems in which children lose in the classroom. This report explains how and why some children can lose in a privatized system and makes recommendations to ensure that all children receive equitable, high-quality educational opportunities.
Are Low Performance and Achievement Gaps Inevitable? In December 2001, Finland surprised the education world with some of the highest scores out of over forty countries on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test. Other countries, such as the United States, did not fare as well, scoring below the average of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries on that iteration’s primary focus of reading literacy. The difference in the PISA results prompted policymakers and educators worldwide to ask “How did the Finns do it?” and “How do countries like the U.S. need to change?” In the ensuing years, some key details emerged. First, the Finns did not set out to become high achievers and have very little testing in their education system, so the PISA results surprised them as well. Second, Finland shifted their education system in the 1970s towards a focus on equity and teacher professionalization. Finally, Finland’s PISA success has continued as the country consistently scored among the top nations on PISA on reading, math, and science literacy since 2000. Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education edpolicy.stanford.edu @scope_stanford
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Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education
Conversely, the U.S. had a lower average score than Finland by more than 50 points out of 800 (or ½ of a standard deviation) and a greater disparity than Finland between the 5th and 95th percentiles of more than 25 points (¼ of a standard deviation). The PISA findings confirmed the already well-known phenomena of the “achievement gap” in the U.S. However, the solution to this issue was not a deliberate, explicit focus on equity as the Finns had done; instead, No Child Left Behind mandated testing and sanctions or reconstitution for schools that did not make adequate yearly progress.