ABSTRACT
Policymakers in countries across the globe are embracing private models for
organising the delivery of education. The privatisation movements that swept
through many developing nations in the last few decades famously moved state
industries into private hands, but also reconfigured social services such as
education by imposing user fees or encouraging private provision, for instance.
Comparable policies have been evident in wealthier nations as well, where policy-
makers are creating markets in education by enabling families to choose, easing
entry for new providers, and encouraging competition. As the most prominent of
these types of reforms in American education, charter schools-—publicly funded but privately managed schools-—leverage such quasi-market mechanisms for the production and distribution of mass education under the argument that these
approaches address both ethical and economic objectives-—the former focused on social justice, the latter on organisational effectiveness. While these two goals may
be mutually compatible in many instances, the question is the degree to which
charter school results reflect these dual impulses-—the moral mandate of access to better options, and the economic expectation that competitive incentives enhance
outcomes.
