Abstract
This research develops a gravity-based index of public school competition from private schools within local markets. Proponents of educational reform often call for policies to increase competition between schools. A major hurdle for researchers examining this issue is to determine a workable definition of “competition” by which they can measure the degree of competition within local markets. This study addresses this challenge by developing a school competition index for public schools in the Jackson metropolitan area of Mississippi, USA that considers the enrollments in public schools and the enrollments in their neighboring private schools, as well as the distances between them. The school competition index reveals the degree of competition for each public school based on its spatial location relative to peer private schools operating within its service area. This methodology can be useful for evaluating competition in other markets and redefining the traditional market structure.
Highlights
A sense that educational outcomes need improvement is essentially universal, in the United States, where public schools lag behind other countries in standardized student achievement scores [1]
This research develops a gravity-based index of public school competition from private schools within local markets
A major hurdle for researchers examining this issue is to determine a workable definition of “competition” by which they can measure the degree of competition within local markets
Summary
A sense that educational outcomes need improvement is essentially universal, in the United States, where public schools lag behind other countries in standardized student achievement scores [1]. The markettype reforms free students from being restricted to attending only public schools in the districts where they reside and provide them the option to instead attend private schools of their choice, regardless of their location In districts where such reforms have been implemented, government-supplied vouchers and tuition tax credit programs have been put in place to offset the costs of private school attendance. Policy reformers believe such promotion of private school attendance generates market-based competition for local public schools. It is important to note that these techniques rely on only the number of schools and student enrollments These techniques cannot provide accurate estimates for competitiveness, as they ignore the distance between the competitors. Most of the previous research used competition variables by employing either one or two of the three components, but not all three together [8,9,10,12]
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