Welfare Reform on the Web (March 2001): Education - Overseas

THE UNEVEN PLAYING FIELD OF SCHOOL CHOICE: EVIDENCE FROM NEW ZEALAND

H. F. Ladd and E. B. Fiske

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, vol. 20, 2001, p. 43-46

Article examines how New Zealand's system of parental choice of schools played out in that country's three major urban areas with particular emphasis on sorting students by ethnic and socio-economic status. Analysis shows that schools with large initial proportions of minorities were at a clear disadvantage in the educational market place relative to other schools and that the effect was to generate a system in which gaps between "successful" and "unsuccessful" schools became wider.