Abstract
This study examines the effects of the school choice policy by utilizing data from the Seoul Education Longitudinal Study. Specifically, the school participation and school satisfaction of parents whose child entered high school in 2010 through the high school choice policy are analyzed. The results reveal that the opportunity for school choice itself is not strongly relevant to parental participation in school. Parental participation in school is influenced more by individual factors than institutional factors. In addition, providing school choice does not lead to an increase in parental school satisfaction. Whether the students actually entered the school they preferred during the school choice phases has more significance than only having the right of choice. Based on the results, the implications of the study and some suggestions for the school choice policy in Korea are discussed.
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Notes
In Korea, the hierarchization of universities has been considered as one of serious social problems. Graduates from the prestigious universities tend to enjoy many opportunities for their success. Therefore, parents, in general expect their children to enter the prestigious universities. During the high school choice phase, parents are more likely to choose high schools that will increase the likelihood that their child will be admitted to the prestigious universities. So, opponents of school choice were more concerned with that school choice policy can be misused by parents.
Self-governing private high schools and independent private high schools are subjected to different requirements regarding the extent of school operation expense that the school’s foundation should be responsible for and the level of autonomy in student recruitment and curriculum management. In general, independent private high schools are in healthier financial conditions have more autonomy compared to those of self-governing private high schools in Korea.
Civic educational organizations in Korea are critical of the government’s policy to expand self-governing private high schools. In Korea, the public is concerned that the nation’s high school education is negatively affected by the hierarchization of universities and the excessive focus on college entrance exams. However, the SMOE argued the importance of competitiveness of high school education and the right of school choice and introduced the high school choice policy in 2009. The Korean government is also implementing the system as a key policy to improve the quality of education through competition among schools. Since a progressive superintendent of education who is against school choice policy was elected in 2011, a new scheme for the policy is being developed.
Imputation method using EM algorithm, which is usually used to identify mean and covariance of incomplete data, is applied for missing data imputation. When substituting missing data with this method, two steps—Expectation (E) and Maximization (M)—are used until the fluctuation of the estimated parameter becomes insignificant.
Parental school participation was used as a dependent variable in the previous section but here, it was employed as one of the independent variables to account for school satisfaction level. It is highly likely that parental school participation and parental school satisfaction have a reciprocal relationship. As suggested in the previous section, it is possible that parents participate actively in school education activities because they are satisfied with the school their child is attending. But on the other hand, one cannot rule out the possibility that parental school satisfaction level increased as the parents actively participate in school education activities. In fact, the assumption is supported with the covariance between parental school participation and school satisfaction levels measured 0.181(p < 0.01). To accurately estimate how these variables are influenced by the school choice policy, parental school participation is used as a control variable when parental school satisfaction is designated as a dependent variable in this section.
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Acknowledgments
This paper is a revised and supplemented version of the previous one presented at 1st SELS (Seoul Education Longitudinal Study of 2010) Conference. The authors would like to thank participants who provided helpful comments at the conference. We also thank the anonymous reviewer for useful comments.
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Kim, JS., Hwang, YJ. The Effects of School Choice on Parental School Participation and School Satisfaction in Korea. Soc Indic Res 115, 363–385 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0224-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0224-4