Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect in an Urban School System.

SCHOOL choice; PRIVATE schools; EDUCATION; URBAN schools; BUSINESS enterprises; PUBLIC schools

The article comments about private choice programs' abilities to serve as effective mechanisms for turning around declining urban schools. These programs include Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation's offering of partial scholarships for children to attend private schools; exit, voice, loyalty and neglect in an urban school system. The author states that this study is a useful contribution to the sparse literature on the workings of choice programs. While the results are generally predictable, they provide important information for the formulation of future research and provide empirical data to consider the validity of existing choice arguments. The belief was that if schools were forced to compete in art open market they would be forced to adapt, as business organizations are, and start providing a superior product. Such a policy was especially attractive in urban environments, which were perceived as having the greatest problems and where alternative suppliers already existed.