As a child of communism I am, of course, “in favour” of public education but really don’t know much about it in other countries. In Serbia, “private” (relating to universities only) education is for people who couldn’t get into a state university (which is free) and then they basically pay for a place in one of the private schools. I hear it is similar in Spain, with some business school exceptions. Quite a different story in Anglo-Saxon countries, no?

Therefore seems to me there is no inherently better model – a well-regulated private school system with guaranteed access to all students, guaranteed area coverage and strict and uniform learning standards can be equally good as a well-funded public system with activist parents and “correctly” set incentives for the teachers and administrators. The devil is in the details, as always.

In a country like India where inequality is accepted and status comes from family or group membership and personal wealth, the incentives for underpaid teachers to teach and parents in poor areas to demand school facilities from governments are small (all groups know they are not likely to get any satisfaction).

In China (if it’s anything like my communist education), status as a teacher is reward in itself and government should at least be seen to provide equal (if not always good) facilities for all students.

In countries with failed governments (or failed governance of areas such as slums) it seems to me there are some but not all incentives contributing to private education - for example activist parents send their children to school, aid organization gives money for teachers, WFP provides school meals for children and take-home rations to make it affordable to attend….the question is really would direct donor budgetary support to government’s education budget, together with a change management effort espousing the value of universal education produce the same or better educational result for the world’s children?

I would say yes. If the government doesn’t divert the money, if the politicians don’t steal it, if the slum children are counted and provided with facilities as other children, if the family manages to eat without child labour….if….all ifs that are not satisfied in probably 80% of this world. Thus people try to do the best they can with what they have and haphazard aid efforts help them in some cases - then we point to them as successes. But should it be a model? I don’t think so.

Universal free public education has only existed for a couple of hundred years in the developed world, and just because it does not yet in the developing world (or undeveloped or underdeveloped or whatever) it should not be given up on as a value.

However, it is clear that I or anybody else in the top 10% of the world’s privileged people can not expect reality to confirm to our values…yet. It is the same problem with food aid - yes maybe it creates dependence in the long term and stifles productivity and self-sufficiency. But when people are hungry what do you say? No food aid, here are some seeds to plant as the new policy is that you should be self-sufficient in the medium to long-term horizon. Until then….die?

So to summarize - yes to both public and private, whatever works in the place but public education, like public health is better as the conditions for a well functioning private market are not met in these areas - there are information failures and social benefits are greater than private benefits - therefore a clear THEORETICAL case for public.

Interesting indeed…ok, am going back to the issue of rising food prices - why don’t you do something on that?

It is worth mentioning that some of the comments came from a very unlikely source - the E.G. West Centre at the University of Newcastle. For those unaware, the Centre is led by Prof. James Tooley who has done by far the most work on privatization of education, and is currently also President of the Education Fund at Orient Global. I have a lot of respect for his work in the trenches of urban poverty. So it is disappointing that some comments initially led me to believe that even questioning his hypothesis was seen by the Centre as a personal affront. In followup email communication though Dr. B. M. Craven was kind enough to provide substantial references in support of his argument. I will look at each of these to see if they address or counter the issues previously presented and provide them here as a possible rebuttal to my article (you decide).

• Video links on the E.G.West website. In particular, the following seem relevant
  • New Schools of Thought in Africa (2007)
  • Educational Self Help in India (2002)
  • Does Private Education work for the Poor (2005)
• Private Education is Good for the Poor: A Study of Private Schools Serving the Poor in Low-Income Countries (Cato Institute paper)

Simultaneously, Dr. Craven also said he would “be glad to read any research which supports your thesis which you can recommend.”

While some data was presented in the last post, it is true that there has been little research that makes a case for public education. Of course, these days proposing any role for the State is fraught with risk but I’d still like to throw down the gauntlet to the readers.

Can you refer to any empirical studies that look at the benefits of education in a public setting and/or the failings of a private school system?

In view of such overwhelming “evidence,” what, after all, is the evidence in favor of public schools?

Yet, the evidence is very much there. After all, China far outperforms India on educational indicators such as enrolment and efficiency, despite having a largely public primary system. Clearly, you don’t need a private system to achieve high quality and provide universal access to education.

Closer to home, Abi at Nanopolitan shows how publicly funded Kendriya Vidyalaya schools outperform even private schools at the CBSE exams. In 2007, KV schools (of which there were 860), had a pass percentage of 95.6%. Jawahar Navodayas, had a pass percentage of 96.4%, private schools had 91.8%, and other government schools had 70.3%. Clearly, not all public schools are the same!

Another important point emerging from this post is the massive performance improvement that Delhi’s government schools displayed last year. The pass percentage of this group of schools improved from 59.73% to 77.12%. The key was offering the right carrots and sticks, as illustrated in the article. Clearly, then, improving quality is not a question of public or private, but of offering the right incentives - regardless of the system.

A third bit of evidence emerges, ironicaly, from Tooley’s study itself. A Dr. B.M. Craven writes in a comment that in Tooley’s study, “facilities such as toilets, playgrounds, desks, blackboards and computers were inferior in the private schools by comparison with the Government schools but such measures (inputs) do not appear to have affected outcomes.” Tooley’s summary also states that private unaided schools had “sometimes better facilities than government schools.” Yet, why are we settling for worse facilities, so long as they do not affect outcomes?

Such infrastructure is important not simply for outcomes, but in and of itself (would you prefer to send your child to a school without toilets, or one with?). It also has an important impact on limiting access and school choice (as pointed out previously, girls will be excluded in this system). Finally, it clearly points to the underlying problem of private schools - that they have no incentive to invest in anything that does not directly appear to improve quality - and will therefore not invest to correct existing inequities (through e.g. greater investment in infrastructure, outreach, etc.).

It is a sign of our times that we take all things publicly funded to be of poor quality, despite evidence to the contrary. While government is, in general, not known for service excellence, there is enough data out there showing that public schools can be very good (i.e. private schools are not necessary), and conversely, that private schools have substantial problems of their own (i.e. private schools are not sufficient to solve our problems).

As Martin Carnoy wrote: “I would like to believe, with Professor West, in a panacea that could make everyone learn more without investing enormous time and effort in improving children’s nutrition, home lives, and the way all schools deliver knowledge…Unfortunately, vouchers tend to divert attention from the overall complexity of the learning problem rather than providing a real solution.”

These problems persist despite several initiatives by the Central government to improve outcomes. Increasingly, therefore, liberal economists, international development agencies, and philanthropies have called for a shift towards greater privatization of primary and higher education. In particular, calls emerge to disconnect the funding of education from its operation, through the provision of education vouchers.

Privatization has worked well in several situations in India. Yet as the belief that it works everywhere gains greater currency, there is a need to evaluate if education is also amenable to privatization.

The Basic Argument

The idea of private education vouchers was first put forth by Prof. Edwin G. West. More recently, high profile organizations such as the World Bank and the Orient Global Foundation (with committed funding of US$100 million) have given the idea new impetus.

The theory is simple – deregulate education and allow private operation of schools, giving parents the option to choose where they wish to send children (so called “school choice”). The resulting competition amongst schools for these “consumers” would lead them to improve quality and expand access. The obvious challenge of including poor students is solved by providing poor parents with vouchers funded by the government.

Voucher systems have been tested in several countries - developing and developed - and arguments exist for and against. But few have tested the underlying assumptions of the theory of privatization.

Testing the Assumptions

The success of a largely private system depends fundamentally on two things – a financial incentive and the natural competition of free-markets. The assumption of competition in turn assumes three things: a) that “school choice” is real, b) that it is not possible to cheat the system, and c) that information flows are reliable enough to evaluate quality.

Do these assumptions hold?

The fallacy of school choice: In a private system quality improves through competition. Yet, experience shows that true competition is unlikely here. This is first, and foremost, a matter of supply and demand. Demand for education vastly outstrips supply in India and will do so for the foreseeable future. This remains true in the most affluent areas of Delhi, where it is common for parents to apply to several schools to secure admission for their children. Further, the cost of switching schools is high, marked by a social cost to the child of readjusting to a new environment and the administrative/financial cost to parents of the process. Finally, and as pointed out by Charles Wheelan, schools tend to restrict supply simply to maintain quality. Consumer power, then, is so limited as to make “school choice” more of an illusion even in the most “privatization friendly” situations. And if it doesn’t work here what hope do parents in small, remote, poor villages have where exclusion is largely social and thus not corrected by vouchers?

The problem of cheating: The second assumption is that faced with strong incentives schools will improve actual outcomes rather than cheat the system. It is illustrative, here, to note that in response to the No Child Left Behind act, public schools in Chicago were found cheating on grades (they also underreported violence). That these were public schools is irrelevant – what is important is that faced with a top-down incentive to improve quality, schools preferred to cheat the system rather than make the necessary investments to improve actual quality.

Poor information for poorer consumers: This brings forth a final problem - that of evaluating quality. The education “market” is marked by poor information flows and by an inability of a large number of parents, who never went to school themselves, to evaluate objectively what a good school is. This again undermines the assumption that “school choice” exists. The truth is that we simply do not have a single definition of quality. Therefore, it is equally possible that schools that invest more in marketing and outreach - rather than in improving quality - will gain the most.

Unintended Consequences

There is one final test to which a private system must be put – even if private education were to improve quality, would it improve access and existing inequities in provision - or at least not make them worse? The two points cannot, of course, be delinked because any school’s outcome depends largely on the students it admits. Therefore, schools that receive students from academically poorer backgrounds must invest more to achieve the same outcomes. As Charles Wheelan said:

I expect that the Chicago Public Schools would be excellent if they had to accept only 1 of every 10 eligible students. (Indeed, the magnet schools in the system, which are allowed to select students competitively, are some of the best in the country.)

Second, education is often denied to children for a variety of causes and money or the absence of schools are only two of them. Others include the lack of roads, the lack of separate toilets for girls and boys (which prevents parents from sending girls), and the lack of “cultural capital” – such as supportive parents – which provides a select group of students with the skills to gain admission while depriving others of the same.

Can a largely private system ensure that schools help students overcome these barriers? Alternately, as education becomes a commodity, provided to the highest bidder, can its ill-effects be suppressed by ensuring necessary investments are made – such as arranging buses, building toilets, or helping disadvantaged students overcome their skills deficit through corrective courses? The obvious solution, of course, is oversight through regulation. Yet, to paraphrase economist Joan Robinson, “any State that has the capacity to prevent the ill-effects of the commoditization of education can also prevent the commoditization of education altogether; and any State that cannot prevent the commoditization of education lacks, ipso facto, the capacity to prevent its ill-effects.”

Is Privatization Necessary?

The preceding suggests that a private system is not a sufficient condition to better quality and access. Is it, however, a necessary condition? Or, is there another way of solving the problem through a public system?

There is no better argument that the same results are possible from a public system than China. As this comparison shows, China has done better than India both in providing quality and access to primary education, yet done so through a largely public system. Recent moves to privatize and deregulate education have been largely limited to higher education, with universities being encouraged to raise their own funds and endowments.

Clearly, then, privatization is not the only game in town. Nor is there any reason to believe that private schools are always preferred. For instance, a recent study in slums found that the vast majority of parents sent their children to “budget” private schools. This does not indicate a preference for private schools, but rather a lack of sufficient and good public schools. Moreover, very often in cases where both are present, private schools may be preferred not because of actual quality differences, but because of a social preference for private providers (seen as status symbols), or due to perceived rather than actual quality differences (bringing us back to the problem of defining quality).

Taking The Best of Privatization

It bears mentioning that despite its limitations, privatization does offer insight into the core problem – that public systems in India currently lack any compelling incentive to provide good education. The question should therefore be, how can incentives be built into public and private systems that ensure greater access and better quality without the negative consequences of a fully private system.

Clearly, this is possible. The American No Child Left Behind Act, despite its problems, is one example. In recent years, Delhi too has improved elementary education, largely by providing the right carrots and sticks to schools and teachers. Finally, one must also consider that the majority of government schools in India are poorly funded and managed. Simple measures such as a better working environment for teachers and basic infrastructure that indicate respect for their work would go far to provide non-financial incentives for improving quality. Indeed, without such changes comparing public and private schools is comparing apples to oranges.

Conclusion

The argument for privatization is at once political and ideological. It is political because it reflects how societies feel about the role of the state in providing “public” services such as healthcare and education. It is ideological because proponents often supplement demands for privatization with terms such as “economic freedom” or “choice” to justify their preference. Yet, this last confuses means with ends. The existence of choice can hardly be viewed as an end in itself in this discussion. Not only does such terminology presume that choice is informed but it is relevant in this debate only if it improves actual educational outcomes, rather than the perceived satisfaction of parents.

It would appear that privatization is neither necessary nor sufficient for better quality and access to education. Nor is money the only or even best incentive available to improve either. Yet, the debate does offer valuable insights into why our system has not worked and how to fix it. The current system can, therefore, gain much through greater competition (possibly internal) and better incentives (possibly non-financial).

Finally, this debate must recognize that quality is interlinked with access and equity. The two require clear tradeoffs – high quality can generally only come by selecting the best and conversely by denying access to the most needy. Therefore, no debate on privatization can occur without debating the balance between quality and equity that India wishes to achieve. It is as much a debate on what India’s system should be like, as it is a debate on what our national priorities are to be –to be a thoroughbred meritocracy or to offer equality of opportunity to the majority of our people.

Note: Throughout this text I have used the American English term “public school” to imply a “government school” (the British/Indian English equivalent).

Against this backdrop it is noteworthy to see how India is approaching education. SciDev.Net points to a NatureNews article on initiatives by the Indian government to expand higher education. These include the establishment of “30 new Central Universities, five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, and 20 new Indian Institutes of Information Technology,” as well as “1,600 polytechnics, 10,000 vocational schools and 50,000 skill-development centres.”

These plans would be the first major investment in education in India in a very long time. But they point to two underlying differences between what Peru and India are doing.

First, India previously rejected the OLPC, calling it “pedagogically suspect.” Instead, India is building on tried and tested ways of improving education - providing scholarships and expanding availability. Given the scale of needs in India the government rightly believes its money is best spent on methodologies that are known to work, and should be commended for making a safe but reliable bet.

Second, and in Peru’s favor, what is striking is that it is spending on primary, not higher, education. While the amount involved is small (US$ 50 million), it is telling that the government sees investment in remote rural and tribal communities as relevant - even if it uses those communities as educational guinea pigs. By contrast, while Indian policymakers now accept the urgency of expanding primary education, there is no urgency yet to move the issue up the agenda. The neglect of primary education (and health) remains the biggest challenge and most criminal oversight of Indian policymakers.

A proposal to force firms to hire more workers from the dregs of Hinduism’s caste system (see article) would be different. It would be a disaster…

Extending into the private sector a policy that has been a disaster in the public sector is lunacy.

The Economist is a bit late to the party - this controversy has been around for a year. But this coverage is notable because it comes from a publication better known to cover US and European domestic politics. And if the Economist’s criticism of the policy proposal is unequivocal, it is not without explaining the real problem and the real solution:

Reservations in companies would not just damage business. They would also distract attention from the real source of the problem. Responsibility for lower castes’ lack of advancement does not lie with the private sector. There is no evidence that companies discriminate against them. The real culprit is government, and the rotten educational system it has created.

Originally, reservations were supposed to be needed only for a decade. After that, it was reckoned, they would be unnecessary, because primary education would be universally available. Nearly six decades on, it is not. And the quality of much of India’s higher education is execrable. By one reckoning, only a quarter of engineering graduates, the raw material of a booming computer-services industry, are employable. The government should concentrate on sorting out schools and universities, not piling new burdens on business.

There’s another effective weapon against ancient prejudices: growth. As Indians get richer, their caste biases fade. Middle-class urban Indians are less likely to marry within their caste than the rural poor, and less likely to wrinkle their noses at a dalit. Happily, the ranks of the middle class are swelling in a fast-expanding economy—for which India has its businessmen to thank. Hobbling them with quotas will only make it harder for them to help the country change.

Well said, all around.

In an interesting - and clearly very balanced - article on Yahoo! Finance, Charles Wheelan puts some doubt in our mind.

There’s just one problem with school choice: The data aren’t that compelling. Choice does seem to have modest positive effects. In places where school choice has been studied with appropriate controls, the test scores of participating students are a few points higher — though there’s often no difference at all in some subjects or grades.

He concedes that the theory of school choice is beautiful, and turning parents into consumers should align incentives. But theory doesn’t always lead to practice:

Most Ivy League schools accept less than 1 in 10 applicants. What kind of business turns away 90 percent of its eager customers — while often accepting those who can’t afford to pay over those who can? Why hasn’t Harvard doubled or tripled in size? Why hasn’t Yale quadrupled tuition? Those are the kinds of things that competitive firms are supposed to do when demand exceeds supply.

Of course, the best schools are often the best because they restrict the supply of difficult students. That’s part of competition, too. Competitive businesses make money by improving operations — but also by shedding loser customers. I expect that the Chicago Public Schools would be excellent if they had to accept only 1 of every 10 eligible students. (Indeed, the magnet schools in the system, which are allowed to select students competitively, are some of the best in the country.)

Market proponents of school choice forget that markets aren’t perfect, school’s may not be desirable businesses, and choice is often illusory.

Indeed, underlying many of the cases of increasing Gini coefficients is a growth process in which those at the top of the distribution (top 20% here) have seen their expenditures/incomes grow considerably faster than those at the bottom (bottom 20% here).

This report is follows on my previous post on the IEB on income inequality in India. In that I made some fairly basic points that a) income inequality was increasing in India (as measured by the Gini index), b) this was undesirable because income inequality reinforced social exclusion, (as a case I showed that inequality negatively impacted access to healthcare), and c) insofar as growth had not reduced, and possibly contributed to, inequality, India should revisit the kind of growth it engendered.

This report further strengthens the case for a more equal growth. It also indicates that our current growth path does indeed exacerbate inequality and how policy interventions could help. The following points, in particular, stand out.

First, why is inequality important? This being an economic report, it does not delve into the ethical choice inherent in that question, but it suggests two more practical reasons - because it damps the “poverty reducing impact of a given amount of growth”, and because it may hinder growth prospects (there is also a very readable introduction on measuring inequality, and how appropriate the gini index is to that measurement).

Second, is the inequality a result of growth? The report suggests it is not growth per se, but the kind of growth we are witnessing that is resulting in inequality, with three proximate causes: growth differentials between rural and urban divides, between sectors (agriculture vs. services and industry), and between the educated and those not. In fact, “widening differentials in earnings of the college-educated vis-à-vis less educated individuals appears to be the single most important observable factor accounting for increasing inequality.” Somewhat simplifying, the BBC quotes the report as saying:

The bank said the main reason for widening wealth gaps in recent years was the discrepancy in investment between urban and rural areas which favoured better-educated, better-off urban populations.

This is particularly important. In my previous post I had made a similar observation regarding healthcare - that inequality affected access to health, a key to equality of opportunity . This report suggests a similar dynamic leaves the uneducated poor in a vicious cycle of social exclusion. Since economic growth prospects favor the educated and the poor lack quality education, it is unlikely they will be able to benefit from those prospects and move up - leading to further inequality.

What role for policy? The ADB suggests increasing reforms that generate income and growth for the poor, as the way forward. The emphasis, clearly, needs to be on ensuring equality of opportunity, through for instance better access to finance, removal of social exclusion, and redistribution of wealth through public funding of rural education and basic health.

The discussion to my previous post was vigorous particularly on the last point. Some suggested that private healthcare (in this case education) is better. But that argues only for private operation of these services, not their funding (two separate debates). The second major criticism, that is countered here, is whether it is public spending - or spending in general - that is important, and the public sector should in fact stay out of funding healthcare. That argument is rather counter-intuitive - since the poor are, by definition, poor and pay a premium for most services, the only way for them to spend more on education (or health) is if someone else does it for them (say the government). I will grant, however, that given the scale of the challenge, it is more appropriate to talk of public and private spending. This is particularly true in agriculture, where distortionary public policies keep private investment out of the supply chain (a point reiterated by the ADB).

I have not seen the entire report, but even the summary makes fascinating reading. It should remind us that GDP growth is not the final measure of success. Since we compare India so often to China, here’s a statistic - China’s GDP increased the most amongst the economies studied, but so did its income inequality. Perhaps we can learn something from that too.

This post originally appeared on the IEB.

Michael Diodato, writing for the HIR, finds the OLPC technology disappointing - the much touted “mesh network” is unlikely to be useful in rural settings where people may not be within range of each other, and certainly not within range of an internet connection; the crank is unlikely to provide sufficient power for ordinary use, including use of the wireless network; and the restricted configuration requires proprietary software with limited applicability elsewhere.

It is not technology, however, that kills the OLPC’s value proposition - unfortunately for Negroponte, the HIR finds the OLPC short even on learning. Amongst the practical problems mentioned are the challenges of distributing - equitably - 1.2 million computers, and the cost - to families - of keeping the laptop in and their child out of work: “Considering the opportunity cost of keeping the laptop and the option selling it for approximately $100, the family is likely to choose the latter.”

Testing the “Learning” Proposition

There is one final nail in the OLPC coffin: the efficacy of learning with the OLPC - the basis of Negorponte’s argument - has never been tested. Negroponte, himself, is a serious critic of any “pilot tests”, claiming at the IADB that “to do a pilot project is ridiculous,” and suggesting at TED 2006 that “this is not something you have to test, the days of pilot projects are over.” That is a rather odd stand for a “scientist.” As Robert Kozma points out in his piece, “empirical data are the sin qua non of both scientific research and engineering design.”

The OLPC is gaining serious traction now. Recently, Intel joined the OLPC bandwagon, perhaps as a hedge against its own Classmate PC project - which has been shipping in volume, at prices of around USD 225, since March. And the laptop may finally ship this year, maybe as early as September. But for countries - particularly developing ones - to proceed without testing the “learning” hypothesis is irresponsible.

Countries that adopt OLPC without pilot testing are in effect conducting a nation-wide experiment. It is a roll of the dice. If the OLPC predictions are correct, the nation and its children win.

On the other hand, if the grand national experiment fails, it is developing countries and their children that are least able to manage the consequences of this failure or recover from the expended costs.

Alternatives: One Laptop Per Family? Basic Education?

Neither of these criticisms is dogmatic, which makes them all the more credible. Technology is a good thing and its use in education to be encouraged. But how is that to be best achieved? And what is the goal of technology in education, anyway?

The HIR, for instance, offers some alternative distrubtion models that tackle some of the social shortcomings of the OLPC. How about setting up OLPC cafés (shared laptops in communities), or giving laptops not to each child, but to each family?

Fewer laptops would be needed [and] more money could be spent on individual laptops at the same total cost. …It also reduces the chance of a family selling a laptop. If the entire family is benefiting from the machine, as opposed to just the children, then the family may decide to keep the machine. If software is designed that would enable the parents to use the laptop for their own purposes, perhaps for growing crops in an agricultural area, then the parents would have more of a reason to keep the machine.

But in the end, there may be an even simpler alternative to the OLPC - so simple that nobody really thought of it. Or perhaps that is why the OLPC is the preferred option, being so much sexier and providing much better photo ops for the world’s politicians and technologists:

One simple solution is to invest money into traditional methods of education as opposed to those requiring technology. Although one of the main purposes of these advances is to allow all children to access the Internet, such a goal is not essential to learning…US$250 million being spent by Libya could instead buy millions of books or pay salaries for thousands of teachers.

When looking at the use of technology in education, it is difficult to dispute that it is helpful. However, with only a limited amount of resources that can be devoted to a developing country, it is imperative these resources are distributed in the most efficient way possible.

In the end, India was right to reject the OLPC. Whatever the real or imagined reasons for the rejection, the money is better spent elsewhere and the project is, after all “pedagogically suspect”.

Prof. Edwin G. West has been perhaps the earliest and most compelling proponent of education vouchers. While he had written extensively prior to 1997, his paper “Education Vouchers in Principle and Practice: A Survey” is a great introduction into the views of the pro-privatization camp, with enough “empirical” research for the qualitatively inclined. He concludes:

Those who fear that government regulations associated with vouchers will ultimately strangle the individuality of private schools will insist that this may yet happen. Nonetheless significant numbers of families are now obtaining positive firsthand experience with private schooling through voucher systems.

In the same issue Martin Carnoy writes: “Is Privatization through Education Vouchers Really the Answer? A Comment on West” providing a counterpoint. In my opinion, it takes a more holistic, less regimented approach to education, concluding:

I would like to believe, with Professor West, in a panacea that could make everyone learn more without investing enormous time and effort in improving children’s nutrition, home lives, and the way all schools deliver knowledge. Our task as educators and social reformers would be that much simpler. Unfortunately, vouchers tend to divert attention from the overall complexity of the learning problem rather than providing a real solution.

I am still exploring the subject, and will write at greater length soon. But what seems obvious is that both sides are right, and both sides are wrong.

Voucher proponents are so enamoured by the perfection of their theory (free-markets, choice, competition) that they seem to forget the wide gulf that often exists between theory and practice, particularly in poor countries (this is evident from a reading of West’s paper). And equally, those against vouchers point fail to provide any alternative that would effectively address the failure of public education.