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Much justification for third sector involvement in education advances from the notion that attributes from business and non-profit fields could benefit state-run public schools. The purpose of this paper is to explore this issue by examining theoretical underpinnings and expectations for third sector participation in public education systems, particularly with respect to educational innovations and improvements, and the structural opportunities, incentives, and impediments for such innovation.

The question is how third sector participation shapes the rate, nature, and types of innovations in education as schools interact in response to competitive pressures. This conceptual analysis of the third sector examines the political-economic features and structures of the sector in fostering innovation, with reference to the US sector that was specifically positioned to enhance the innovative capacity of publicly funded education.

The analysis indicates that educational innovations are not necessarily more prevalent in or because of the third sector, and that there are obstacles to their creation and diffusion. Moreover, schools often respond to competitive incentives in ways unanticipated by policymakers, such as school marketing rather than instructional improvement, sometimes in ways detrimental to goals set out for public education, such as social sorting. In fact, instead of the third sector simply developing or incentivizing innovations, there is evidence that this sector has adopted innovations developed in the state sector.

The analysis suggests that a third sector based more on a professional, as opposed to a competitive, model may better facilitate the development of innovative capacity in education.

School leaders in the United States are increasingly embracing marketing practices in order to promote their schools in more competitive conditions. Yet while policymakers are actively encouraging such conditions, little attention has been paid to the equity effects of these practices. Advancing from the insight that marketing materials can illuminate some of the underlying incentive structures to which schools must respond, this study examines patterns in the marketing materials in two metropolitan areas with the most competitive education markets in the United States. Web-based materials for all schools in Washington, DC and post-Katrina New Orleans were analyzed, noting how individual schools and different types of schools represent their racial makeup. By analyzing these differences in traditional-public, charter, and private schools, we were able to see emerging patterns that suggest the role of market forces in school organizational behavior, with cautionary lessons for how different types of students are valued.

This analysis addresses the question of how the goals motivating policies around markets for supplementary education are supported and reflected (or not) in the subsequent structures for those markets.

Drawing on policy documents and empirical research on these policies, we examine the policy contexts and market structures the low-intensity form of supplementary education (SE) seen in the United States relative to the high-intensity case of Korea – specifically, the supplementary educational services (SESs) of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the After School Programs (ASPs) in Korea, respectively.

The analysis finds that Korea is using school-based SE programs as an alternative to existing SE markets in order to mediate perceived free-market excesses, while the United States is subsidizing SE markets to address the negative consequences of inequitable schooling. Yet, even in different contexts and purposes, policymakers in both countries see a value to supplementary education as part of their overall education strategy, despite a lack of evidence on the effectiveness of these approaches. This commonality is reflective of the larger neoliberal approach, evident around the globe, of using market forces such as competitive incentives and parental choice to drive policy toward social objectives.

The significance of this analysis is the insight that these policy approaches, while different in context and policy specifics, represent an overall blurring of traditional distinctions between public and private organizations.

Tristan Bunnell began teaching International Baccalaureate economics at the International School of London in 1990. He is currently head of economics at the Copenhagen International School. He was awarded his MA in school marketing and development from the University of Surrey in 1993. He obtained his doctorate on ‘public relations activity as an indicator of the unique nature of international schools’ from the University of Southampton in 2003. He has published a number of articles about distributed leadership, marketing strategy and public relations activity in international schools. His current research interests include global curricula developments, especially the growth and development of the International Baccalaureate.

America began the process of funding public education beyond the military colleges and American Indian School in 1965 with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA has evolved over the past 40 years to be called No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB has had three major evaluations in which I participated in the last two evaluations by the U.S. Department of Education and each evaluation found that NCLB did not make a difference in the education lives of the students who received services from the program; but it did not harm. This chapter explored all the school choice options available to k-12 students in public and private schools; and reviewed the evaluation of these school choice options. Research reveals that for disadvantaged students, traditional public schools outperform private schools and charter schools. Voucher programs are also reviewed. This chapter concludes that educational equity is not adequately addressed by NCLB, school choice programs, charter schools or the traditional public schools.