Expanding Meaningful School Choice and Competition

Transcript

RUSS WHITEHURST: This is the first of four reports that are coming from a project here at Brookings called Rethinking the Federal Role in Education. The task set for each of the task groups including this one was to generate recommendations for policy that were, A, grounded in evidence; B, novel and not beaten to death already in the policy community; and C, having some prospect of action or enactment. So we wanted to operate in an area that was informed by evidence where we could say something that might generate attention and where we could foresee at least in your imaginings that Congress of the administration would view the proposals as feasible or at least worth talking about.

We began the task on choice and competition by thinking in the abstract what's necessary for a good choice system to work. We identified four components that we thought would be present in any market-based system. The first is the presence of choice or choosers. If you get assigned by the government the car we will drive, then we don't need to talk about choice in the automotive industry. There is none. So we need the ability of people to choose. Second, we need information on the basis of which that choice can be made. I'll stick with the car analogy for a moment. We know that Toyota's sales are going to be down because the market is flooded with information about sticking accelerators so that you need information on which choice can be made. Third, and I think will be one of the important and relatively unique aspects of our report, we think that information alone does not produce rational behavior, that you can be flooded with information and still make what seem to be irrational choices. So we think the way information is delivered will be extremely important in determining how choices are made and how rational those choices seem to be in the long-run.

Then finally, there need to be consequences in the system. Again, if you are assigned by the government to drive a Toyota, the sticking accelerator makes no difference at all, you'll still be driving a Toyota tomorrow, but the fact that Ford can jump on this situation and try to increase its sales is part of the competitive matrix that makes the system work. So we will move down this path and I think we'll introduce some interesting recommendations for you in terms of expanding choice. We're going to talk about the national chartering of virtual education providers. I don't think that's been talked about before.

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