Voucher theory fails when parents lack comparative school performance data

Evidence

Recent experiences with educational voucher experiments illuminate the importance of the absence of performance measures in street-level bureaucracies. First, teachers were very resistant to comparison to other teachers and to the staffs of other schools. Second, parents rarely exercised their option to shop around for the best school, tending instead to support the conventional schools. From the standpoint of the present analysis one could hardly expect parents to exercise options when they had no basis for understanding which schools performed better. Whatever problems they may have had with their schools parents may have attributed to difficulties within themselves or their children. In the absence of solid information on alternatives the security of the known quantity was in any case generally chosen over the unknown quantity. Significantly, in the experiments in which school systems were able to differentiate the programs of each school, parents did exercise considerable options. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 417

Categorization

• XREF: Direct falsifying case for the informational-assumptions of market-based education reform. — connects to: School choice worsens inequality when access prerequisites are unequal — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 957; Voucher experiments undermine the competitive precondition market theory requires — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1398
• SEED: Angle: school-choice advocacy assumes comparative knowledge parents structurally never receive; best evidence shows stated preferences flip once options become legible.

Broader Connections

• Voucher experiments undermine the competitive precondition market theory requires #expands (0.90) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1398
• School choice worsens inequality when access prerequisites are unequal #corroborates (0.85) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 957