School Vouchers:a Perspective Of Government Governance Tools

During the process of world educational reform, school vouchers and its system have been an important approach to educational reform. Theories and practices of school vouchers also reflect that as a concrete approach to marketization of education, school vouchers play an unique role in educational reform and government governance. School vouchers system promotes the trend of free to choose and emphasizes the fairness and efficiency of education. The government has also adjusted its functions and governance tools in the marketization reform of education. It shows that school vouchers and its system have strong vitality. However, the implementation and effectiveness of school vouchers system depend on a country’s history background, social institution, politics, and cultures which to some extent have an impact on the approach to educational reform. Despite the worthy attempts at school vouchers system, how to adapt the system to china’s actual conditions to promote the current educational reform is still an urgent problem which remains to be tackled.This paper consists of four parts. The first part examines theoretical foundation of school vouchers system. It provides the definition of school vouchers and some supporting theories for carrying out relevant research. The second part summarizes three patterns of school vouchers and general operation mechanism, and specifies the intrinsic mechanism of school vouchers as a governance tool. The third part compares and contrasts the school vouchers systems between China and the US from the perspective of governance tools, and analyzes the present situation of school vouchers system between the two countries. The final part examines impacts of school vouchers system on china’s educational reform. It proposes that china’s educational reform should strike a balance between fairness and efficiency in government spending and a dynamic balance between hierarchy and market, focuses on the marketization reform of education institution, and strengthening government responsibilities and its governance capabilities.