Intra-school competition and student achievement

Abstract

Within the economics of education literature, numerous studies have investigated the relationship between educational market competition and educational achievement. Educational market competition has been defined as either the availability of vouchers within a community or the number of schools or school districts within the relevant market structure. While these studies have shown that increases in inter-district competition result in increased student achievement, no studies, to our knowledge, have yet investigated the effect of intra-school competition on student achievement. Within this study, a measure of intra-school competition is developed and the findings indicate that increased intra-school competition leads to increased student achievement.