Hoover Institution's Education Next: Private Schools for the Poor Thriving in Third World.

STANFORD, Calif. -- A world of small, independent private schools is thriving where you would least expect to find it -- in the world's poorest countries. But don't look for those schools in the traditional schoolhouses -- they're off the beaten path and don't cater to the elite.

While working for the International Finance Corporation (the private finance arm of the World Bank), education policy professor James Tooley of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne stumbled across a network of "underground" private schools for the poor in a number of third world countries. They're small, often hard to find, and sometimes unacknowledged, as in China, where the only recognized schools are those sanctioned by the state.

In Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, India, and China, these schools are thriving, providing good education; they are also affordable and sought out by the poor. Housed in unlikely places -- shacks, corrugated tin sheds, stone or brick houses -- these schools provide an inspiring look into education in the third world -- and turn the idea of private schools being only for the elite on its head.

For the past two years, Tooley and a team of researchers have studied these innovative schools around the world. Education Next provides a first look at their findings:

--Contrary to what might be expected in impoverished regions of the world, private school enrollment is not confined to the privileged classes.

--In the areas they studied, the research team found that a large majority of schoolchildren attend private school and that a significant number of children attend unrecognized private schools.

--The research suggests that children attending these small, rural and slum-based private schools and unrecognized private schools outperform similar students in government schools in key subjects.

Tooley points out that the evidence from these developing countries challenges the claim, made by school choice opponents, that the poor in America cannot make sensible and informed decisions if school choice is offered to them.

"If public school is failing in the ghettoes of New York or Los Angeles, we should not assume that the only way in which the disadvantaged can be helped is through some kind of public intervention," Tooley writes. "In fact, we have already embarked on programs that support private initiative, with government support, with vouchers and charter schools. The findings here suggest this alternative approach may be the preferable one."

Read "Private Schools for the Poor" in the new issue of Education Next now online at www.educationnext.org.

Education Next is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution that is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform. Other sponsoring institutions are the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.