Question

Explain why economic theory suggests that metropolitan areas with many school districts would be expected to have better educational outcomes than metropolitan areas with a single school district.

Answer 1

In case of a metropolitan area with a single school district, the schools in that single school district won't have a lot of incentive to improve their education system or to take extra efforts to get better results,as it would be a monopolistic type of a situation according to economic theory.Even though the schools will be in competition with each other in that particular district, but still the competition will be lesser than that of a multi-school district situation. In this case, as the students won't have a choice to go for a school in a different district, so all the students in that metropolitan area would be serviced by schools in that single school district, irrespective of quality.

However, in case of metropolitan areas with many school districts, the schools in different districts will be in competition with each other(along with being in competition to schools in the same district) to garner maximum students from the metropolitan area. So the various schools will have to maintain and even improve their quality to the best possible level in order to keep and grow their share of students. Such a behavior of schools will definitely lead to better education for students in the metropolitan area, thereby giving better educational outcomes.