{"id":7148,"date":"2017-04-13T11:46:29","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T17:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lavozlit.com\/?p=7148"},"modified":"2017-04-13T11:46:29","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T17:46:29","slug":"an-invisible-hand-in-education-schools-vouchers-and-distortions-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2017\/04\/13\/an-invisible-hand-in-education-schools-vouchers-and-distortions-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"[Chile] An Invisible Hand in Education? Schools, Vouchers, and Distortions: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
From Pinochet to Pi\u00f1era, Chile’s way is to make students pay – Times Higher Education (THE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\nby Felipe Gonz\u00e1lez and Pablo Mu\u00f1oz: Guest contributors<\/span><\/i><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/i>Part 1<\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/i><\/h3>\n

Two months ago, <\/span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i> published an article about the educational system in Chile and Betsy DeVos, currently the 11th United States Secretary of Education. DeVos is a well-known advocate of school choice, a policy that General Augusto Pinochet implemented in Chile in the 1980s. This article narrates the Chilean experience. <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The Chilean educational system<\/b><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nThe 1973 coup d\u2019\u00e9tat that overthrew the democratic and self-described socialist government of Salvador Allende was a critical juncture in Chilean history. In the following seventeen years a brutal dictatorship led by army general Augusto Pinochet assassinated thousands of citizens and implemented a package of market-based policy reforms that radically shook the country. In education, the Pinochet regime followed the recommendations of economists trained at the University of Chicago. These policies pushed Chile to transition from universal free education to a market-based system in which parents choose schools for their children. After twenty seven years and six democratic governments, the educational system remains fundamentally unchanged.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nWe emphasize two reforms that exemplify the spirit of the changes made in the 1980s. First, by taking the administration of public education out of the Ministry of Education in the central government and placing it on the hands of mayors as local administrators, the Pinochet regime decentralized the educational system. The objective was to increase the allocative efficiency of resources by relying on private agents in the market. Second, the regime introduced a voucher scheme that transferred money from the central government to private school owners and local administrators. Overall, this privatization process eliminated teachers\u2019 historical contracts and destroyed their unions.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nAs a direct consequence of the introduction of a market-based educational system in 1981, the percentage of students that attended public schools declined from 80 percent in 1980 to 40 percent in 2016. Nowadays, students in private voucher schools – equivalent to U.S. charter schools – represent 50 percent of total enrollment. The remaining 10 percent of students are enrolled in private schools that work outside of the voucher system. Given the incentives placed by the reforms of the regime, it is not surprising that the former best public schools \u201cmigrated\u201d to the private sector (<\/span>Hsieh and Urquiola, 2006<\/span>).<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

An invisible hand in education?<\/b><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nThe motivation behind Pinochet\u2019s educational reform was simple. First, give resources to students and let them and their families choose among schools. Second, schools will compete in quality to attract students, who choose schools of better quality. Third, quality of education will increase and learning will improve. This logic is nothing more than the well-known efficiency argument first posed by Adam Smith and popularly known as the \u201cinvisible hand.\u201d Less popular among non-economists is the monumental work by <\/span>Arrow and Debreu (1954)<\/span>, who proved the necessary conditions for a market-based system to maximize allocative efficiency. It will not surprise the reader that these conditions are hardly met in real life and that is why a significant amount of current research in economics deviates from the view of perfectly competitive markets and focuses on imperfections. Education is not an exception and its imperfections are more than enough for us to be skeptical about \u201cinvisible hand\u201d type of arguments to support a free market in education. <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nThe first set of deviations from perfectly competitive markets come from the \u201cdemand side,\u201d i.e. how parents choose schools for their children. Researchers have shown that this decision is influenced by school fees, school quality, and the geographic distance between home and school (e.g. <\/span>Gallego and Hernando 2009<\/span> and <\/span>Cuesta et al. 2017<\/span>, among others). The imperfections arise for several reasons. The unequal distribution of income in a society implies that children can only choose certain schools. In addition, school quality is hard to measure and it is confounded by students who attend that school. Because parents care about classmates, students will tend to sort across schools by ability and\/or socioeconomic background. Moreover, the geographic segregation of households combined with transportation costs make it impossible for children to have the same opportunities at the moment of choosing a school.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nThe second set of deviations come from the \u201csupply side,\u201d i.e. the behavior of schools. Research has pointed to many undesirable responses of schools to improve their position in the market. For example, schools tend to manipulate the pool of students that take standardized tests to improve their school-level test scores and seem as of better quality to the eyes of the public and the government (<\/span>Cuesta et al. 2017<\/span>). This behavior affects parents choice of schools and cause the government to incorrectly assign teacher bonuses. Schools are also strategic when considering where to locate geographically, who to accept as students, and how to set their school fees. Moreover, a market oriented educational system might exhibits large turnover with direct consequences for the students. School closure increase school dropouts and grade retention (<\/span>Grau et al. 2017<\/span>).<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nThe claim of improved efficiency with a free market system involves many assumptions about the behavior of parents when choosing schools and about schools when they compete in the market. Research has shown that these assumptions are unlikely to hold in the real world. Therefore, the conclusions derived from these assumptions need to be reassessed under more realistic conditions. Moreover, the \u201cinvisible hand\u201d is silent regarding inequality and socioeconomic factors which have a huge influence on student outcomes (<\/span>Mizala and Romanguera, 2000<\/span>). A market-based educational system actually allows the influence of these factors to grow over time (<\/span>Mu\u00f1oz and Redondo, 2013<\/span>).<\/span><\/p>\n

Vouchers<\/b><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nEven though the framework of perfectly competitive markets is inappropriate to evaluate a voucher policy in education, this does not necessarily implies that vouchers are a wrong policy <\/span>per se<\/span><\/i>. Indeed, depending on the market imperfections that we think are prevalent in education, one could argue that the introduction of vouchers could increase, decrease, or have no effects on the outcome of interest. For example, <\/span>Neilson (2013)<\/span> shows that the increase in the amount of the voucher in Chile led to an increase in test scores that seems to be explained by more competition among schools in the market. <\/span>Feigenberg et al (2017)<\/span>, however, raises doubts about the previous findings and argues that strategic responses by schools explain part of the apparent increase in test scores. <\/span>Abdulkadiroglu et al (2017)<\/span> study the Louisiana Scholarship Program and find that vouchers actually decreased academic outcomes.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nResearch can be complicated and we simply need more evidence to understand what are the consequences of introducing vouchers in education. Until now, however, the accumulation of knowledge suggests that the effects of vouchers drastically depend on country-specific institutional features. Indeed, <\/span>Epple, Romano, and Urquiola (2017)<\/span> provide the most comprehensive study of vouchers and conclude that these might work in some cases and not in others. Small and large scale programs seem to have different effects and more work is needed to understand why is this case. <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nThe Chilean experience with vouchers in the last 30 years provides many lessons that need to be considered before introducing a voucher scheme. Vouchers do not guarantee an improvement in educational outcomes. <\/span>
\n\f<\/b><\/p>\n

References<\/b><\/h3>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nAbdulkadiroglu, A., Pathak, P., Walters, C. (2017). \u201cFree to choose? Can school choice reduce student achievement?.\u201d Working Paper.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nArrow, K., Debreu, G. (1954). \u201cExistence of an equilibrium for a competitive economy.\u201d <\/span>Econometrica<\/span><\/i>, vol. 22 No. 3, p. 265-290.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nCuesta, J.I., Gonz\u00e1lez, F., Larroulet, C. (2017). \u201cDistorted quality signals in school markets.\u201d Working Paper.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nEpple, D., Romano, R., Urquiola, M. (2017). \u201cSchool vouchers: a survey of the economics literature.\u201d <\/span>Journal of Economic Literature<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nFeigenberg, B. Rivkin, S., Yan, R. (2017). \u201cIllusory gains from Chile\u2019s targeted school voucher experiment.\u201d <\/span>NBER Working Paper<\/span><\/i> No. 23178. <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nGallego, F. and Hernando, A. (2009). \u201cSchool choice in Chile: looking at the demand side.\u201d Pontificia Universidad Cat\u00f3lica de Chile, Documento de Trabajo #356.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nGrau, N. Hojman, D and Mizala, A. (2017) \u201c<\/span>School Closure and Educational Attainment: Evidence from a Market-based System<\/span><\/a>. Working paper.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nHsieh, C. and Urquiola, M. (2006). \u201cThe effects of generalized school choice on achievement and stratification: evidence from Chile\u2019s voucher program.\u201d <\/span>Journal of Public Economics<\/span><\/i>, vol. 90, p. 1477-1503.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nMizala, A. and P. Romaguera (2000), \u201cDeterminaci\u00f3n de factores explicativos de los resultados escolares en educaci\u00f3n media en Chile\u201d, Serie Econom\u00eda, No. 85, Santiago, Chile, Centre for Applied Economics, Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, University of Chile.<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\nMu\u00f1oz, P. and Redondo, A. “Inequality and academic achievement in Chile.” <\/span>CEPAL REVIEW,<\/span><\/i> 109 (2013): 107-123.<\/span>
\n
\nNeilson, C. (2014). \u201cTargeted vouchers, competition among schools, and the academic achievement of poor students.\u201d Princeton University, Working Paper.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Invisible Hand in Education? Schools, Vouchers, and Distortions
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