In a piece entitled, "Global Lessons for Improving U.S. Education" Harvard Education Professor Martin West suggests that America can learn three important lessons from the rest of the world as to how to improve our education system.
The second lesson is "private school competition". West looks at the international evidence on education and concludes, "Rigorous studies confirm that students in countries that for historical reasons have a larger share of students in private schools perform at higher levels on international assessments while spending less on primary and secondary education. Such evidence suggests that competition can spur school productivity. In addition, the achievement gap between socioeconomically disadvantaged and advantaged students is reduced in countries in which private schools receive more government funds."
West's piece is interesting throughout and can be found at the link below: