Do Chinese Students Benefit from “School Choice” at the Stage of Compulsory Education?

Book excerpt: Since the 1990s, school choice has become a common phenomenon in China. Parents choose schools for their kids through various channels: spending money, abusing power for privilege, or purchasing houses in specific educational districts. These practices, however, are not only unrecognized by the Chinese government, but they also violate the Compulsory Education Law of the People's Republic of China. Legally, each school-age student must attend a school in his/her districts determined by the principle of proximity-based admission. Existing work on school choice in China has provided valuable insight into the factors behind the exercise of school choice and its adverse effects on Chinese society. Basically, Chinese families’ school choice practices are strongly correlated with their economic, social and political capital. Socially, school choice has led to inequality in education. Prior studies generally have not reflected the short-term effects of school choice on students themselves. I hypothesize that school choice improves students’ academic achievement but has a negative impact on students’ short-term well-being. My research contributes to the current study by evaluating whether Chinese students at the stage of compulsory education benefit from school choice as parents expect. Using data from the China Education Panel Survey, I find results that are not exactly consistent with my original hypotheses. School choice does negatively impact students’ short-term well-being, and it is also negatively correlated with students’ academic achievement. The results imply that parents should not be too optimistic about the impact of school choice. Not only do their children fare worse academically, but they also tend to be less happy than their peers. Policymakers should address the conflicts between equality and educational quality in making future decisions on school choice phenomenon.