The Case For School Choice: New Zealand

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New Zealand's restructured public education system has been in place for a decade. The three hallmarks of the reforms are: the transformation of government-administered schools into locally managed, de-zoned charter schools,13 the creation of an autonomous government agency to assess the schools, and the establishment of a small voucher program for low-income students. These changes have resulted in the devolution of power, responsibility, and information onto parents, communities and educators. A seven-year study of the reforms concludes that they have brought "new energy and focus" to schools. Self-management by schools has "increased the local financial and human resources available to schools. Teachers and principals have paid more attention to what they do. Many principals and teachers . . . see positive gains for children" (Wylie 1997: ix). Eighty-two percent of parents now claim to be satisfied with their children's education (Wylie 1997: 110). Among parents of voucher students, 97 percent are satisfied or very satisfied with the education their children are receiving at an independent school (Smith and Gaffney 1998: 48).

History

Before the reforms were enacted, New Zealand's government school system was expensive, inefficient, unresponsive to community needs, and top-heavy with administrators. Its strict zoning legislation also fostered inequitites as higher-income and predominantly pakeha (white) communities benefited from better municipal schools and lower-income, Maori and Pacific Island families had no choice but to attend failing schools.

In 1987, the market-oriented Labour government set about to reshape state agencies, including education, health, and welfare. Beginning its work on education, it commissioned the "Picot Report," an intensive study of the school system that recommended a complete overhaul of the way education was administered (Picot 1988). Tomorrow's Schools (NZDoE 1988), the government publication that outlined the reorganization, became the eponym for the reforms.

Tomorrow's Schools Charter Schools

Almost overnight, the reforms transformed the monopolistic education system into a collection of partially self-governing charter schools. To improve "the effectiveness and efficiency of resource use in education" (NZMoE 1994: 40), the government shifted authority from the central Department of Education to individual schools. The Department of Education and its 4000 employees were replaced by a Ministry of Education with a staff of only 400 (Stevens 1997). A board of trustees for each school replaced the existing district school boards so that "the running of the institutions [became] a partnership between the [education] professionals and the particular community" (NZDoE 1988: 1). Elected parents and other community members control the schools' boards, which unite the vision and interests of each community with the educational objectives of the state.

At the same time, the government removed school zoning. This measure was designed to improve equity in enrolment, to give families a choice of educational alternatives, to encourage healthy competition among schools for students, and to promote better educational practices. It seems to have been a successful strategy. De-zoning has provided a majority of families with a choice of schools: 85 percent of parents surveyed said their child was attending their first choice of school. The choices of the remaining 15 percent of parents have been limited by transportation, the school's enrollment, and cost (Wylie 1997: 158).

These statistics reveal not only high levels of parental satisfaction but also high levels of parental involvement in their children's education. A large majority of parents are now actively involved in deciding the course of their children's schooling. Two-thirds of New Zealand parents whose children are in school had already decided which school they would like their child to attend next and the majority (63 percent) of those parents could envisage no obstacle to prevent their child from going on to that school (Wylie 1997: 158). Parental mindfulness of their children's education, as common sense suggests and research has proven, is highly correlated with successful schools (Chubb and Moe 1990: 148-49).14

Incomplete Reform

Two important features of Tomorrow's Schools were not put into practice as they were originally designed. The first was funding control for all schools and the second was flexibility for public schools to open and to close according to their ability to attract students.

In the original plan for the restructuring, schools were to receive direct funding for all their expenses on a per-pupil basis, with extra allocations for schools serving special-needs students and low-income communities. Direct funding, otherwise known as the fully funded option, was very unpopular with the teachers' unions, who pressured the government to consign only the administrative portion of a school's budget to its board--as little as 20 percent of total school spending. The unions feared that schools would choose to cut teachers if they were in charge of their own staffing decisions. In 1990, the government of the National Party offered schools the fully funded option for a three-year trial; 69 schools voted to take part.

Three years later, direct funding had proven successful at all 69 schools; every one chose to continue it at the end of the trial period. To the surprise of the teachers' unions, fully funded schools had hired 11 extra teachers and 91 percent of their principals "believed learning opportunities had been enhanced" as a result of direct funding (Smith 1995: 4). By 1997, 10 percent of schools had opted for direct funding (Wylie 1997: 137) and by the end of 1998 more than 23 percent of schools had adopted it (Robert Stevens, Manager Internationalization, Ministry of Education, New Zealand, March 31, 1999, personal communication). The scheme is still opposed by the unions and some school trustees are still hesitant to try the fully funded option fearing that it might negatively affect their relationship with school staff, result in further funding cuts, or force them to make tough budget decisions (Wylie 1997: 136).

Another proposed reform, permitting new schools to open and failing, unpopular schools to close, was never implemented because of opposition from the unions. No new schools may be opened if there is space for students in existing schools. This means that students and teachers are sometimes stuck in failing schools because the popular schools are filled to capacity. The American charter experience suggests that by allowing schools to open and close, the government would have increased the competitiveness and accountability of the educational marketplace. It would have enabled more families to escape bad schools and fostered new charter schools of higher quality. Instead, New Zealand's best charter schools have waiting lists and some students, often from low-income Maori families, are still trapped in failing schools. A survey indicated that parents who were unhappy with the quality of their child's education tended to be those who did not get their first choice of school; these parents were also disproportionately Maori (Wylie 1997: 110).

School Assessment: Educational
Review Office

When New Zealand's government created a Ministry of Education responsible for setting national education policy, it also established the Educational Review Office (ERO) to inspect schools and report their standards. The ERO's purpose is to keep schools accountable to an independent public body, to help improve weak schools, and to keep parents and the general public informed about the performance of their education system.

The ERO completes New Zealand's well-conceived network of accountability to parents, community members, education experts, and the general public. The process encourages schools to work hard, lets them know how and when they will be assessed, and provides them with constructive, professional criticism. The public may request copies of the full ERO reports or read highlights from them in the daily papers.

Some members of the educational establishment who resisted the move toward accountability claim that the process exacerbates inequity.15 Their proof is that waiting lists are long at good schools and morale is hurt at those given poor reviews (Dale, Robertson, Vaughn, and Thrupp 1997). However, research both by the ERO and by independent scholars indicates that schools are more likely to improve if they recognize that improvement is not merely desirable but necessary. Schools that had for years produced poor results recognized that changes were essential when falling student enrolment and frank reports from the ERO highlighted their shortcomings (Smith 1997). Morale at these schools declined at first but more recently has rebounded as schools have confronted vital educational issues that they had previously ignored. Studies find that "most" secondary schools have been "innovative and responsive . . . to the demands or perceived needs of students" (ERO 1995: 13).

Karen Dobric, studying the effects of competition, site-based management, and accountability on New Zealand secondary schools, concludes that "retention rates are increasing, more and more non-traditional possibilities are opening up in senior secondary areas, students' needs are increasingly being met, and retention rates are increasing further" (Dobric 1997: 27). Indeed, a 7-year study by the New Zealand Council on Educational Research found that principals and teachers believed that the impact of the educational reforms on children's learning, teaching content, and teaching style was overwhelmingly positive (Wylie 1997: 161-63) (see figure 3 and figure 4).

Educational Vouchers: Targeted Individual Entitlement Scheme

In 1996, the New Zealand government started a small, pilot voucher program. The scheme was established for those who were most likely to be stuck in poorly performing schools and least likely to be able to afford private alternatives--children from low-income families. The aim of the Targeted Individual Entitlement Scheme (TIE) was to "lift the educational achievement" of low-income families and make "it more likely that these families [would] get the kind of education that they want for their children" (NZMoE 1996: 2).

The TIE program provides 160 students with funding for the independent school of their parents' choice.16 It also provides the student's family with an allowance of NZ$900 for primary students and NZ$1,100 for secondary students to cover additional expenses such as uniforms, books, and extra-curricular activities. Primary and secondary school students qualify to apply if their family income is less than NZ$25,000. The voucher is an all-or-nothing entitlement and parents are required to contribute only to extra-curricular expenses that exceed the allowance. The Ministry makes no attempt to target students other than by their family income and participating independent schools are free to select TIE students as they wish. The TIE information kit states:

It is important that the selection process gives all candidates an equal chance of being selected. Schools should bear in mind that TIE is not simply a scholarship for the academically able; the intention of the scheme is to "open more doors" for all students whose present options are limited. (NZMoE: 1995: 6)

Evaluation of the first two years of TIE indicates that the program has been successful both in raising the educational achievement of low-income students and in providing low-income families with more satisfactory educational choices. Surveys revealed that 97 percent of parents whose children were selected by TIE rated themselves as either satisfied or very satisfied with their child's progress. "The vast majority of parents (in most cases between 84 and 96 percent) were very positive about every aspect of the TIE school for their child, including academic and sporting activities, teachers, level of work, other students, and peer relationships" (Gaffney and Smith 1998: 64). Students and parents agreed that their independent schools were superior to their former schools in almost every way.17

Teachers and principals were also enthusiastic about the benefits of the scheme for the student recipients, who were thought to be progressing as well or better than fee-paying students. They hoped to see the voucher program continued and expanded to benefit more students. The nearly unanimous enthusiasm of principals is remarkable, considering that many schools admitted TIE students ahead of long waiting lists of fee-paying students, and that the majority of schools absorbed expenses that the TIE families could not afford (Gaffney and Smith 1998: 38).18

The TIE scheme was, like all voucher schemes, greatly over-subscribed. Overall, students had about one chance in four of gaining a place. Of those who did so, 66 percent came from single-parent families and 73 percent had family incomes below NZ$20,000 (CDN$16,000) (Gaffney and Smith 1998: 21, 22); 100 percent of families had incomes of less than NZ$25,000.

Gaffney and Smith respond to the concern, often voiced by opponents of voucher schemes, that low-income families lack the skills to make sound educational decisions for their children. They comment that "parents in the scheme appear to have engaged in a careful and skilled process of selecting a school" (Gaffney and Smith 1998: 65). As a result, students are happy, progressing better than they had done in their previous school, and are unlikely to drop out of the program. "Only 3 percent of the 1997 students and 6 percent of 1996 students have withdrawn from the scheme" (Gaffney and Smith 1998: 41). Of these, only 2 students dropped out because of unhappiness with the school.

In light of the success of the TIE program, the government decided to continue it indefinitely at its present level of 160 new students per year. Opposition parties are threatening to cancel the scheme if they win an election later this year and the Independent Schools Council is petitioning to extend public funding to all independent school students.

An Example of Innovation

One high school provides an example of how New Zealand's new education policies have encouraged schools to develop innovative solutions to chronic educational problems and energized many educators to take advantage of a single innovative idea.

Aranui High School in Christchurch, NZ, had a chronic problem of students dropping out of school. Assessments from the ERO helped Aranui recognize the urgent need to improve its graduation rate. Addressing this need, the school hired Harry Westrupp as a placement officer, whose job it was to find a way to keep unmotivated students from dropping out of school. He set out to discover what interested the students who were at risk of dropping out, what they were good at, and what might keep them coming to school. The answer was sports. With the approval of the board, Westrupp created the Aranui Sports Academy for them. The Academy is a unique "school-within-a-school" program that focuses half of the students' day around their motivating interest. Aranui hired a superb coach, increased the guidance of the Academy students, and persuaded their teachers to emphasize links between their motivating interest and their academic subjects. In its first year, the Academy's formerly failing students had the best attendance record in the school (Dobric 1997: 17-18).

Aranui planned three more academies for the second year in which students at risk of dropping out spend one-half of their time in academic university-preparatory classes and the other half in the academy of their choosing. Within two years, six other Christchurch high schools have hired a counselor to assess the needs and interests of their failing students. These schools have proposed a wilderness academy, a visual and performing arts academy, and a military academy. They are likely to be first of many more (Dobric 1997: 17-18, 27). Students alienated by the one-size-fits-all system are staying in school because their schools have been encouraged to innovate. Educational problems are being solved and accountability is starting to pay dividends.

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