School Accountability, Autonomy and Choice Around the World

Book excerpt: Accountability, autonomy and choice are now the watchwords of education reformers around the globe. This book presents new evidence from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test on whether students perform better in school systems with such institutional measures in place. It also provides a theoretical framework for considering these reforms and summarizes previous international evidence. The results confirm that various policies promoting accountability, autonomy and choice are strongly associated with higher achievement for students from both disadvantaged and advantaged backgrounds. In particular, choice through public funding for private schools is associated with both higher performance overall and higher equality of opportunity. Providing detailed and rich facets of different forms of accountability, autonomy and choice, this book is unique in its empirically based and internationally oriented treatment of this up-to-date policy topic. It will be of great interest to academics, policy-makers and practitioners, as well as students in education policy and in the economics of education.