School Choice International: Exploring Public-Private Partnerships.(Book review)

Rajashri Chakrabarti and Paul E. Peterson, eds. (MIT Press). As the subtitle of this book suggests, the papers in this scholarly volume are less about the act of choosing a school than about the ways the private sector has worked in partner ship with public education systems to enlarge and enliven the landscape of schools that can be chosen. A variety of public-private partnerships around the globe are illuminated here: vouchers and charter schools in the U.S., of course, but also publicly funded vouchers in Colombia and Chile, city academies with private sector sponsors in the U.K., fee-charging schools serving the rural poor in India, concession schools in Colombia (where the management of some public schools is turned over to high-quality private schools), government contracting with private schools to enroll students in areas where spots in public schools are scarce in the Cote d'Ivoire and the Philippines, and more. A number of initiatives are described in detail in these papers--written for a conference cosponsored by Harvard's Pro gram on Education Policy and Governance and the World Bank. Some initiatives are the subject of rigorous evaluations here, but more interesting ...