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School Accountability, Autonomy, and Choice Around the World.
By Ludger Woessmann , Elke Luedemann , Gariela Schuetz and Martin R. West. Edward Elgar, Northampton, MA, 2009. 143pp. $95.00.
ISBN: 978-1848445291
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One of the most important questions facing policymakers today is how best to provide education so that both students and society achieve the optimal level of education. When debating this issue, policymakers are often concerned about how to hold schools accountable for student outcomes, what level of autonomy to grant to principals, and how much choice to give parents over where their children go to school. Most literature on the effects of educational reform on these three fronts uses data from one country to estimate the effects rather than using data from several countries. School Accountability, Autonomy , and Choice Around the World fills this gap in the literature by utilizing an international survey to estimate the effects of different levels of accountability, autonomy, and choice on student outcomes.
The authors use data from the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to estimate education production functions. The essential argument through most of this book is that a cross-country analysis offers distinct advantages over a within-country analysis. One advantage is the amount of variation observed in accountability, autonomy, and choice between countries is larger than the amount of variation observed within one country. Another advantage, the authors argue,...