Exit, voice, and choice: Parents, principals, and market reforms in public education

What effects will school choice reforms have on the accountability relationships between parents and their public schools? Using the concepts of exit and voice described by Albert Hirschman (1970), I develop a model of client control under school choice in which the key distinction is whether a school choice program is restricted to the public schools or facilitates exit from them. I investigate the model of client control using both observational studies of public school principals encountering choice and national surveys of principals and parents. I find that school choice policies that allow parents to choose within the public schools lead to more responsive public schools. Policies that incorporate exit to the private sector, however, drain the most effective and active parents from the public schools, challenging the prospect of effective bureaucratic reform within the public schools in systems of private school choice.