EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES IN OECD COUNTRIES
38
that complicates evaluation since many are still in the start-up phase. The evidence on
them is mixed but indicates a variety of places where charter schools outperform the
regular public schools after the initial start-up phase but also suggests in part that the
regulations governing them and the particular competitive public schools they face have
an influence.33
Given the available evidence, support for autonomy also strongly rests on a conceptual
basis. A system with strong incentives seems likely to capitalize on local decision
making.
School Accountability. Many countries around the world have been moving toward
increased accountability of local schools for student performance. The United Kingdom
has developed an elaborate system of “league tables” designed to give parents full
information about the performance of local schools. The United States has legislated a
federal law (“No Child Left Behind”) that all states develop an accountability system
that meets certain general guidelines. It also sets into law a series of actions required
when a school fails to bring sufficient numbers of students up to proficiency in core
subjects.
Evidence on the impacts of these systems has begun to accumulate. While there is
some uncertainty given the newness of the overall federal accountability system
(introduced in 2002), the best U.S. evidence indicates that strong state accountability
systems in fact lead to better student performance (Carnoy and Loeb (2002); Hanushek
and Raymond (2005); Jacob (2005); Dee and Jacob (2009)).
One institutional set-up that combines accountability with parental choice are systems
that give students in schools that repeatedly do badly on the accountability test a voucher
to attend private schools. In Florida, the threat of becoming subject to private-school
choice if failing on the test has been shown to increase school performance particularly
for disadvantaged students (West and Peterson (2006); Figlio and Rouse (2006)).
Curriculum-based external exit exams are another means to introduce some form of
accountability into the schooling system. They provide performance information which
can hold both students and schools accountable. Students in countries with external exit
exam systems tend to systematically outperform students in countries without such
systems (Bishop (1997, 2006); Woessmann (2003a, 2007b); Woessmann, Luedemann,
Schuetz, and West (2009)). In Canada and Germany, the two national education systems
where the existence of external exams varies within the country because some regions
feature them and others not, it has similarly been shown that students perform better in
regions with external exams (Bishop (1997); Jürges, Schneider, and Büchel (2005);
Woessmann (2010b)).
It is difficult to imagine choice or autonomy working well without a good system of
student testing and accountability. Thus, the ideas about institutional structure are
33 A number of studies have based the analysis on student fixed effects, relying on students moving in and out of charter
schools to identify the impact of charters (Booker, Gilpatric, Gronberg, and Jansen (2007); Bifulco and Ladd (2006);
Hanushek, Kain, Rivkin, and Branch (2007)). These studies have generally pointed to a range of quality for charter schools
but highlight start-up problems. Another set of studies considers charter schools that have more demand than open positions,
requiring schools to choose their students by lottery (Hoxby and Murarka (2009); Abdulkadiroglu et al. (2009)). Finally,
matching methods have been used to compare public and private school performance, leading to the conclusion that there is
wide variation in the quality of charter schools compared to the relevant public schools (CREDO (2009, 2010)).