New Zealand is a school choice utopia. In 1989, the country passed a set of ambitious education reforms based on the same arguments for school choice that DeVos and others have made here. The “Schools of Tomorrow” laws abolished the concept of neighborhood schools and gave parents total freedom to enroll their children wherever they wanted.

Parents in New Zealand said they are generally happy that they have choice and happy with their schools. Yet even though the country’s scores on international exams are above average, they have remained largely unchanged since the tests were first administered in 2000, and the percentage of students who were at least moderately proficient has decreased slightly in recent years.

Many school administrators in New Zealand said that knowing their students could leave to go to other schools doesn’t motivate them to improve academics — they’d care about that regardless.

Wylie and other critics maintain that there’s no indication that student achievement has improved as a result of school choice. They say this may be, in part, because parents and schools didn’t respond to choice as proponents anticipated they would.

Academics aren’t always on the top of the list when parents choose a school and – even when they are – parents don’t always know what quality looks like.

That’s another reason school choice hasn’t had the impact its supporters may have hoped in New Zealand: New Zealand only provides direct buses for students who attend their closest school.

Read the full article on school choice by Sarah Butrymowicz at The Hechinger Report