Rethinking the Market Metaphor: School Choice, the Common Good, and the National Football League

Abstract

School choice advocates often assume that market-like competition will create a dynamic K–12 educational environment that will result in improved outcomes. We critically examine this assumption and draw on the literature on market failure and social dilemmas to demonstrate that the market metaphor in a public schooling context has limited utility. We then compare K–12 education to an unlikely context—the National Football League (NFL). We use this comparison to generate a number of insights into how parental choice might be leveraged within the K–12 education system to improve outcomes.

Keywords:

• school choice
• market metaphor
• school reform
• perfect competition market model
• systemic privatization
• pragmatic privatization

Notes

1. Merit goods are defined as goods that have both private benefits and positive externalities, such as inoculations, for example, that reduce an individual's likelihood of contracting a particular disease, but also contribute, in a collective sense, to reducing the overall prevalence of the disease, thereby simultaneously reducing others’ likelihood of contracting it (see, e.g., Koch, 2008).

2. Positive spillovers that cannot be separated from the private product or service in which they are embedded are referred to as inframarginal externalities. This distinction is important, because goods or services with positive inframarginal externalities are not susceptible to the same market supply problems as public or merit goods or services (Hall, 2006; West, 1965).

3. Information in this section is derived from the following sources: Backman, S. E. (2002); Editors at the NFL (2005); Fisher (2010); McDonough et al. (1994); Roberts and Olson (1989); Yost (2006).