A Comparative Analysis of Educational Privatization and School Choice on Testing and Access in the United States and Pakistan

Privatization in education is a global phenomenon that is rooted in the New Public Management (NPM) reforms of the 1970s (Koinzer, Nikolai & Waldow, 2017). NPM relies on the principle-agent dynamic which pertains to the inherent mismatch between the objectives of the principal and agent and puts results and efficiencies at the center of programming rather than issues of equity or fairness (Greuning, 2001). The impact of the most recent wave of globalization (starting in the 1990s) under which the aforementioned reforms took place in the educational sector globally is complex, due to the various drivers, processes and entities involved (Yergin & Stanislaw, 2002; Verger, Novelli, & Altinyelken, 2012). In general, neoliberalism, which is an underlying feature of this wave of globalization has led to the spread of educational privatization in both “developed” and “developing” countries (Yergin & Stanislaw, 2002; Coleman & Jones, 2004). In this context, in the United States (U.S.) for example, we may find the introduction of charter schools in the early 1990s. In Pakistan, we find a reduction in national educational expenditures, resulting in higher opportunity costs for schooling, the crowding out the state, and expansion in the private school sector coinciding with this time period (See Stromquist & Monkman, 2014; Robertson & Verger 2012). The provision of education as a basic human right is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and accompanying United Nations instruments to which both “developed” and “developing” countries around the world, including the U.S. and Pakistan, are signatories (See King, 2007; Jansen, 2005). These instruments, signed in the aftermath of World War II, recognize education as a public good. Yet, for-profit educational initiatives have mushroomed in both “developed” and “developing” countries in recent decades, which may be perceived as as an effort to move education away from the realm of a public good. Some examples to this end include public private partnerships in education, Low-Fee Private Schools (LFPS), Education Management Organizations (EMOs) and educational impact bonds such as the Educate Girls Development Impact Bonds, amongst various other manifestations. This is in spite of critiques that the private sector is not a reliable provider of public goods due to inherent profit-making motive which leads to a myriad of issues such as moral hazard, for example, which arises due to a focus on the delivery of services with the intent of efficiency and profit-making at the expense of equity. More specifically, profit-making in education stands at odds with the delivery of a basic human right (Aubry, Koning & Adamson, 2021). The Abidjan Principles that were adopted in 2018 by educational experts in the presence of a United Nations and eminent Civil Society Organizational (CSO) representatives, reiterate the importance of state oversight over educational delivery, calling for a “regulation” of the private sector, in a pushback to the unbridled liberalization in the educational sector over the past three decades (Aubry, Koning & Adamson, 2021). Much attention here has been directed towards “altruistic” privatization efforts such as LFPS that claim to counter the equity argument against privatization, yet have been found to put education out of the reach of the poorest as conceded by even by vehement proponents of LFPS (See Tooley & Longfield, 2015). These principles have informed a “push” against privatization at the level of the state, multilateral and bilateral agencies; it is important to highlight that this “push”, does not seek to eliminate the private provision of education. Instead, it calls for regulation to prevent the ill-effects of privatization efforts that have been documented in recent decades vis a vis empirical research and evaluations led by academics, multilateral agencies and bilateral organizations as well as CSOs (Aubry, Koning & Adamson, 2021). In this context, I seek to analyze empirical evidence on school choice that has led to the emergence of various privatization modalities in the U.S. and Pakistan to contribute to the debate on privatization in education. I examine to what extent school choice affects quality and access to education in the U.S. and Pakistan through an analysis of relevant literature relying on quantitative and mixed-methods approaches in the field of economics of education.