Policy Formation and Implementation of School Choice Reform in Japan: an Example of Local Adaptation of Educational Borrowing

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Policy Formation and Implementation of School Choice Reform in Japan: An Example of Local Adaptation of Educational Borrowing

Toshiyuki Omomo Gakushuin Women’s College Naoshi Kira Toyo University

INTRODUCTION

This study examined policy formation and implementation of school choice reform at the compulsory education level in Japan. Because of global trends in governance reform, a variety of education reform initiatives, such as standards-based reform, accountability reform, etc., have been implemented across diﬀ erent countries including Japan over the past few decades, and school choice reform is one of them. Distinctive features of governance reform over these decades included the diversiﬁ cation of providers, competitions among them, and consumers’ freedom, or parents’ freedom in the case of education. School choice reform is related to these features.

A. Conceptual Framework and Literature Review The conceptual framework of this study comes from Gita Steiner-Khamsi’s work -- The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending (2004). In the Introduc- tion, Steiner-Khamsi ﬁ rst mentioned that there was a trend to emphasize an international perspective in studying “privatization, decentralization, choice, and standards in education” (p. 1) as these reform movements were spreading around the world based on transnational borrowing and lending. She, then, pointed out that there was “[a] common misconception among practitioners” about the role of comparative education researchers as those who ﬁ nd best practices to transfer from one system to another, which she described as a “normative, ameliorative approach” toward comparative studies. In this context, Steiner-Khamsi stressed instead the importance of “understand[ing] in detail the impact of policy borrowing and lending on local educational

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reform” (pp. 1-2). In this light, the authors of this study present one example of educational borrowing by “describ[ing] how [educational policies] are locally adapted” (ibid., p. 1) through its focus on school choice reform based on policy borrowing in Japan. Existing literature on policy borrowing and lending in Japan is limited and can be found in the literature of comparative and international education. One rare example is Keita Takaya- ma’s work on policy borrowing and local adaptation in Japan (Takayama, 2012). In his work, Takayama attempted to assess the eff ects of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the politics of Japanese education reform, and he examined how domestic political actors, such as domestic media and the Ministry of Edu- cation, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (“the Ministry of Education” hereaf- ter), utilized PISA data for diff erent political purposes (1). Takayama’s work dealt with some of the impacts of testing policies of the international organization (OECD) on local politics of education, and as such it did not deal with policy borrowing and lending among countries per se. In contrast, the authors of this article presented an example of school choice reform based on policy borrowing and lending among countries. In terms of school choice in Japan, many research studies have been already conducted. For example, Masato Ogawa and his associates (2009) presented an evalu- ation study on education reform initiatives in Shinagawa Ward in Tokyo, including school choice, as it was the fi rst ward in Tokyo to implement school choice and other reform measures. Masaya Minei and Toshio Nakagawa (2005 and 2007) published books on school choice with a lot of data and descriptions of districts that implemented and stopped implementing school choice systems. Hiroshi Sanuki (2010) published a book that critically examined school choice reform in Japan. Also, Jun Yamashita (2016) examined the relation between parents’ school choice behavior and their socio- economic status as well as their attitude toward their children’s education. Ogawa (2009) briefl y pointed out in the preface of the book that there was a con- nection between neoliberal reform in the world and school choice reform in Shinaga- wa, but he did not pursue this issue in it. Minei (2007) referred to foreign infl uences on school choice reform in Japan to some extent, but mostly dealt with free school

(1) The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) was created on January 6th, 2001 by merging the former Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture with the former Science and Technology Agency as part of the Central Government Reform. This article uses the term, “the Ministry of Education,” to refer to both the MEXT and the former Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture for the sake of convenience.

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choice and did not cover specially chartered small schools and community schools from the perspectives of policy borrowing and local adaptation. Also, Isao Kurosaki (2004) analyzed the debates on the relationship between U.S. charter schools and Jap- anese community schools in detail, but his work focused just on the policy forming process for establishing community schools. As mentioned above, school choice reform during these past few decades was related to the distinctive features of recent governance reform, and there are thus quite a few books and articles on school choice reform in Japan. However, there is no study yet that comprehensively examines school choice reform in Japan from the perspectives of global policy borrowing and lending.

B. Research Questions and Methods In this context, the objective of this study is to understand policy formation and implementation processes of school choice reform in Japan from the 1980s to the present with an emphasis on how school choice reform, based on global policy borrowing, has been locally adapted in Japan. Speciﬁ cally, three research questions underpinned this study: 1. How were school choice policies formed in Japan? 2. How have school choice policies been implemented? 3. How can local adaptation of school choice reform in Japan be interpreted? This study uses research methods primarily consisting of a review of documents on school choice policy formation at the national level, mostly relying on the data and documents from the Japanese Ministry of Education, the Administrative Reform Com- mittee, etc. as well as on policy implementation in several municipal boards of education that have continued or abandoned school choice policies. In addition, it includes an analysis of interviews with oﬃ cials of municipal boards of education (2).

FORMATION OF SCHOOL CHOICE POLICIES IN JAPAN

In terms of the ﬁ rst research question about formation of school choice policies in Japan, the answer is divided into three parts: choice among public schools; the community school options, and specially chartered small schools.

(2) The authors interviewed staﬀ of the Hanno Board of Education in Saitama on December 18, 2014, and staﬀ of the Suginami Board of Education in Tokyo on January 26, 2015.

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A. Discussions on the Systems of Magnet Schools and Vouchers in the U.S. and the Introduction of Public School Choice in Japan As Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose was translated and published in Japan in 1980, a societal debate on school choice reform started. For example, the “Kyoto Group for Thinking about the World” presented seven recommendations to reform school education in 1984, and one of them was “to drastically relax the school attendance zone regulations (to expand freedom of school choice)”(Kyoto Group, 1984, p. 18). In Japan, municipal boards of education have set up school attendance zones and have required parents to send their children to the school located in the zone where they live (Omomo, 2012, pp. 128-129). The Ad Hoc Council on Education, created under the Nakasone administration (1982-87) as his advisory panel in 1984, came to exert a massive impact on education reform. Freedom of school choice became a major issue. At a hearing held by the Council, a core member of the Kyoto Group, Hiroshi Kato, emphasized the importance of drastic deregulation. Kato was a professor at Keio University, and he had supervised the translation of Milton and Rose Friedman’s work, Tyranny of the Status Quo, in 1984. The Council examined the systems of magnet schools and vouchers in the U.S., along with school choice systems in the Netherlands and the U.K. in order to give children an appropriate educational opportunity in accordance with their parents’ preferences and to improve education by exposing public schools to competition among them (Ad Hoc Council on Education, 1987b, pp. 86-91). However, the propo- nents had to face offi cials of the Ministry of Education, who were strongly opposed to school choice and liberalization of school service providers, as well as council members who supported these offi cials. After the fi erce debate, although the report of the Ad Hoc Council on Education did not include the systems of magnet schools and vouchers, it proposed the gradual expansion of the opportunities of school choice by the fl exible operation of the school attendance zone system (Ad Hoc Council on Edu- cation, 1987a, the Third Report, pp. 207-208). Steiner-Khamsi (2004) pointed out that “[t]he likelihood for policy borrowing increas- es when incremental reforms fail” (p. 4). In fact, the 1980s in Japan was a period in which serious education problems such as bullying and violence toward teachers oc- curred, and radical reforms were demanded. Reformers criticized incremental policy making, and looked for reform models from abroad. However, offi cials in the Ministry of Education strongly opposed this as they tried to maintain the existing system of schooling. After the debate on school choice reform at the Council, the Ministry of

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Education gave a notifi cation concerning the Council’s Third Report, and pointed out the necessity of examining the operation of the school attendance zone system in it (Ministry of Education, 1997a). There was little action, however, on the expansion of public school choice. It was not until about 10 years later in 1997 that concrete action came. In 1996, the Administrative Reform Committee emphasized the importance of relaxing regulations on school choice and expanding choice opportunities. In 1997, the Ministry of Edu- cation gave a notifi cation to require boards of education to make eff orts to carry out the school attendance zone system more fl exibly (Ministry of Education, 1997a). Af- ter this notifi cation, boards of education especially in urban areas started introducing public school choice at the compulsory education level. In addition, another administrative reform committee of the Cabinet, the Council for the Promotion of Regulatory Reform and Participation of the Private Sector, presented its view that the voucher system would promote competitions among providers of education and provide parents and children with richer and more diverse educational services (Council for the Promotion of Regulatory Reform, 2004, pp. 86-87). The decision made at the Cabinet Meeting in March, 2005 ordered that the current status, signifi cance, and problems inherent in voucher systems in other countries be examined. The Ministry of Education created a research team on school vouchers, which looked into situations abroad including those in the U.S. The report prepared by the team in May, 2006, however, stated that “even in the U.S. where the idea of vouchers originated and was promoted, there were arguments both for and against the eff ects of vouchers,” and hence it did not actively promote the introduction of the voucher system in Japan (MEXT, 2006).

B. Community Schools In the U.S., the state of Minnesota was the fi rst to pass a charter school law in 1991, and the fi rst charter schools were established in that state that same year. Several other states followed suit, and the number of charter schools increased as President Clinton encouraged states to pass laws establishing charter schools during the 1990s. In Japan, Joe Nathan’s Charter Schools (1996) was translated in 1997, followed by Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education (2000) by Chester Finn, Bruno Manno and Gregg Vanourek in 2001. In this context, the Japan Productivity Center, which held infl uence over policy-making at that time, published a report, entitled Ed- ucation Reform through Choice, Responsibility, and Solidarity: In Search of Restoring

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Schools’ Functions (Tsutsumi and Hashizume, 1999). In the report, the authors main- tained that “charter schools constituted a good method of newly creating diverse public schools and expanding the range of choices, and that these schools were generally small and operated based on networks of teachers and parents who were connected with their local communities” (pp. 45-46). The National Commission on Education Reform, created by Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi (1998-2000) as his private advisory panel in 2000, was the ﬁ rst government-level organization to take up the issue of charter schools. Professor Ikuyo Kaneko of Keio University, who belonged to the National Commission’s Second Sub-group, proposed the introduction of community schools as a new type of public school, and he also distributed a handout on charter schools in the U.S. After the debates within the Sub-group and in the larger Commission, the promotion of establishing new types of schools (“community school,” etc.) became one of the Commission’s recommendations. Prof. Kaneko and his associates recognized that there was a mismatch between the existing Japanese school system and the changing demands of the time, and, like the reformers in the 1980s, they looked for reform models from abroad. According to them, community schools are to be created by people’s own initiatives, and as such they share a fundamental philosophy with charter schools, although they are not established based on private contract but by some means that provide for system-level assurance, so they are modeled after the Local Management of Schools (LMS) in the U.K. Kaneko and his associates explained that “community schools were designed by combining the basic principles of charter schools in the U.S. and the theories of LMS system in the U.K. and arranging them in a Japanese way” (Kaneko, Suzuki & Shibuya, 2000, pp. 20-40, 181-182). That is, community schools were envisioned as combined products of policy borrowing from the U.S. and the U.K., as well as local Japanese adaptation. In 2004, community schools were institutionalized through a revision in the law. According to the new system, school management councils, consisting of community members, parents, etc., were to be established in school, and the council was given the authority to approve the basic principles of school management and express opin- ions on school management and personnel decisions. However, the new law did not include an element of choice, and the community school system became a participatory one instead. As described below, strongly skeptical views emerged in Japan not only toward public school choice but also the charter school system.

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C. Specially Chartered Small Schools In Japan, there is one older current of school choice reform. The Specially Char- tered Small Schools (SCSS) system was not borrowed, but started in Japan. In 1977, the SCSS system was ﬁ rst introduced in Sapporo, Hokkaido in order to allow parents to choose small suburban schools regardless of the school attendance zones. In 1997, along with the above-mentioned notification, the Ministry of Education published a booklet explaining ﬂ exible implementation of school attendance zone systems, in which the Ministry featured the SCSS system in Sapporo as one case of school choice reform. Since then, this system spread rapidly to other districts in the country. The objective for SCSS in Sapporo was “to allow parents to choose small elementary and junior high schools which are located outside the city and surrounded by nature if they wanted their children to develop a sound body and mind as well as rich humani- ty” (Ministry of Education, 1997b, p. 106) . The major factors behind the development of the SCSS system were a declining birth rate and depopulation in suburban areas, and the schools designated under the SCSS system were those that could have been closed, but survived thanks to the system. The SCSS system has a principle somewhat similar to that of magnet schools in the U.S., although the former in Japan is designed to attract students to small schools with some distinctive features located in depopulated, suburban areas, while the latter in the U.S.̶in its original form̶was about promoting racial integration in schools. Importantly, the SCSS system was established not so much to allow parents to freely choose their children’s schools as to assist small schools in suburbs to attract students from urban areas and survive in the face of declining birth rate in such depopulated areas. As such, the SCSS system values local communities.

IMPLEMENTATION OF SCHOOL CHOICE POLICIES IN JAPAN

In terms of the second research question about implementation of school choice policies in Japan, one important feature of school choice reform is that the following discussion is all about choice among public schools, and that a voucher system including choice of private schools, is not allowed in Japan. It should be pointed out here, though, that there are private schools in Japan, and parents can choose to send their children to private schools, but the proportion of students in private schools is quite limited to about 3.3% at the compulsory education level (6 years of elementary school, and 3 years of junior high school, or 3 years of the lower secondary course of 6 years’

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secondary school) as presented in Table 1 (3) (MEXT, 2017).

Table 1: The Number of Schools and Students in Elementary and Secondary Schools, Japan, 2017 (MEXT, 2017)

Number of Schools National Public Private Total % Private Elementary Schools 70 19,794 231 20,095 1.1% Junior High Schools 71 9,479 775 10,325 7.5% Secondary Schools 4 31 18 53 34.0% Total (Schools) 145 29,304 1,024 30,473 %Total 0.5% 96.2% 3.4% Number of Students National Public Private Total % Private Elementary Schools 37,916 6,333,288 77,453 6,448,657 1.2% Junior High Schools 30,101 3,063,816 239,400 3,333,317 7.2% Secondary Schools (lower secondary 1,458 11,522 3,509 16,489 21.3% course) Total (Students) 69,475 9,408,626 320,362 9,798,463 %Total 0.7% 96.0% 3.3%

Following the above-mentioned 1997 notifi cation by the Ministry of Education, a public school choice system started in Kiho Town in Mie in 1998, and then in 2000, Shinagawa Ward in Tokyo began school choice programs, with many other urban boards of education later following suit. The Ministry of Education classifi ed school choice reform into the following fi ve categories as presented in Table 2 (MEXT, 2013, p. 1). The first category (A) is the only one that completely allows free choice of schools, and the next two types (B & C) limit parental choice by block or neighboring attendance zones. The fourth and fi fth types (D & E) signifi cantly limit choice of schools to assist small schools in the suburbs and children in certain areas.

(3) The Figure 1 does not include newly established 6 years’ compulsory education schools and the elementary and lower secondary departments of schools for special needs education.

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Table 2: Five Categories and Deﬁ nitions of the School Choice Systems (MEXT, 2013)

Five Categories Deﬁ nitions Allowing a choice of desired schools among all the A. Free choice system schools in the municipality in question Allowing a choice of desired schools within each of B. Block-based choice system the blocks created in the municipality in question Allowing a choice of desired schools only within a C. Neighboring-attendance- neighboring attendance zone while maintaining the zone-based choice system traditional school attendance zones Allowing a choice of designated schools among all D. Specially chartered small the schools in the municipality in question while school system maintaining the traditional school attendance zones Allowing a choice of schools to only those who live E. Particular area choice in certain areas while maintaining the traditional system school attendance zones F. Others Systems other than A through E

Statistically speaking, according to a survey by the Ministry of Education in 2012, out of 1,547 municipal boards of education in Japan with two or more elementary schools, 234 of them (15.1%) had continuously implemented one of the ﬁ ve categories of school choice policies, while 1,267 (81.9%) had never implemented these policies, followed by 26 (1.7%) considering implementation, 12 (0.8%) implementing, but considering abolishing the policies, and 8 (0.5%) having previously implemented, but subsequently abolished them. Similarly, out of 1,250 municipal boards of education with two or more junior high schools, 195 (15.6%) continued implementing school choice, while 1,022 (81.8%) had never implemented it, followed by 18 (1.4%) considering implementation, 9 (0.7%) implementing, but considering abolishing it, and 6 (0.5%) having implemented, but subsequently abolished school choice (MEXT, 2013, pp. 3, 9). As for the types of school choice systems adopted, there are two important features in terms of school choice reform in Japan. First, out of the municipal boards of education that adopt school choice, the adoption of the free choice system is quite limited, and it constitutes only 10.5% of elementary schools, and 27.1% of junior high schools. School choice reform is mostly conﬁ ned to controlled choice systems, as presented in Figure 1 (MEXT, 2013, pp. 4, 10).

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Figure 1: Types of School Choice Systems Adopted at the Elementary and Junior High School Levels, 2012 (MEXT, 2013)

Second, there are clear differences between elementary school and junior high school levels, as presented in Figure 1. At the elementary level, the specially chartered small school (SCSS) system formed the highest percentage (35.9%), followed by particular area choice systems (27.9%), and neighboring-attendance-zone systems (19.2%), while free choice system comprised only 10.5% of the total. At the junior high level, particular area choice systems made up the highest percentage (28.9%), followed by free choice systems (27.1%), specially chartered small school systems (20.0%), and neighboring-attendance-zone systems (16.9%). Although the particular area choice systems based on limited choice still dominate the types of choice adopted at the junior high school level (28.9%), the free choice system, at 27.1%, is adopted for junior high almost three times more often than at the elementary school level. The main consideration here is that elementary school children are not physically and mentally mature yet, and it is deemed undesirable for them to travel too far to attend a school. Programs developed in Shinagawa Ward in 2000 and 2001 illustrate this point in that the block-based choice system was used at the elementary school level to limit the choice to neighboring areas, whereas the free choice system was used at the junior high level.

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Figure 2: School Choice Implementation Status of Municipal School Boards with More Than Two Elementary Schools in Japan, 2012 (MEXT, 2013)

Interestingly, 33.5% of municipal boards of education with more than two elementary schools were considering implementing school choice policies in 2006, but the number fell sharply to only 1.7% in 2012, as graphically presented in Figure 2 (MEXT, 2013, p.3). The year 2006 was less than ten years after the introduction of public school choice systems in Japan, and expectations for school choice reform were still quite high, with one third of municipal boards of education considering implementation, but six years later in 2012, there was almost none due probably to the fact that those boards had found reasons preventing them from implementing school choice systems. In other words, the number of boards of education that came under the category “never implemented” went up dramatically from 52.3% in 2006 to 81.9% in 2012, while the number of those in which implementation was ongoing increased only slightly from 14.2% to 15.1%, as depicted in Figure 2.

LOCAL ADAPTATION OF SCHOOL CHOICE POLICIES IN JAPAN

As described above, we can identify three distinctive features of local adaptation of school choice reform in Japan. First, free school choice did not take hold. Second, community schools based on a participatory model have been promoted instead.

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Third, a unique type of school choice, SCSS, originated in Japan and has caught on within Japan to a considerable extent. Let us elaborate on these three features below.

A. Free School Choice Reform Not Taking Hold Concerning the fi rst point, we fi nd that policy borrowing took place in Japan in the period when traditional incremental policy making seemed to fail. This exemplifi es Steiner-Khamsi’s theory of policy borrowing. Reformers strongly criticized incre- mentalism in policy making. As described before, the Ad Hoc Council on Education in the 1980s tried to overcome serious problems during those periods by drastically changing the existing education system, and discussed reforms in foreign counties as possible reform models for Japan. Eventually, public school choice was introduced particularly in urban areas. How- ever, it has not spread very widely in Japan, and in recent years, quite a few municipal boards of education abolished public school choice or limited choice to only neighboring attendance zones. One example is Suginami Ward in Tokyo, which introduced a school choice system (a ”Neighboring-attendance-zone-based choice system,” as in C. in Table 2) based on its mayor’s top-down initiative in 2002. After 10 years of implementation, the Suginami Board of Education, under a diff erent mayor’s leadership, established a committee to examine accomplishments and challenges of the school choice system. Based on the committee’s report (Suginami Review Committee on the School Choice System, 2012), the Board of Education decided to abolish its school choice system, as the municipal government in Suginami emphasized the importance of community ties at the local level and pointed out problems of polarization of student enrollments into popular schools and unpopular schools, which prevented stable school management. Other municipalities decided to abolish school choice reform based on similar reasons. For example, in 2008, Maebashi City in Gunma Prefecture also announced its decision to abolish its school choice system (also a “Neighboring-attendance-zone-based choice system,” as in C., Table 2). The Maebashi Municipal Board of Education (2008) presented four major reasons for its decision: (1) a weakening relationship between schools and local communities; (2) the difficulty of ensuring the safety of students while commuting to and from school; (3) polarization of student enrollments across schools; and (4) unintended reasons for choosing schools, such as rumors (pp. 2-3).

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B. Active Promotion of Community Schools by the Ministry of Education Second, we can point out that one important factor behind the fi rst feature is a sentiment, expressed by offi cials of the Ministry of Education, against public school choice reform at the compulsory education level, and their passive response to the reform. The Ministry of Education strongly criticized the diversifi cation of providers of education and free school choice reform during the meetings of the Ad Hoc Council on Education in the 1980s (Ministry of Education, 1985, pp. 55-56), promoting instead the stable nature of community-based schooling and emphasizing the importance of equality. Since the post-World War II reform, the Ministry of Education has determined the details of curriculum standards, teacher qualifications, and standards for facilities. The intention was to provide everyone with common and equal educational opportunities throughout the country (Omomo, 2012, pp. 129-130, 132). The uniformity that has resulted in Japanese public schools from such policies obviated ever having diverse types of schools ‒ a necessary condition for school choice reform ‒ and the Min- istry of Education was opposed to there being a diversity of providers and allowing free school choice from among these providers. Eventually, the Ministry of Education received strong requests from the administrative reform groups and was forced to give notifi cation on the relaxation of school attendance zones. Since then, the Ministry has given notifi cations periodically in accordance with the demands of the administrative reform committees. However, all the Ministry of Education actually did was to issue some booklets with examples of school choice reform and to present statistical data on school choice, but it did not actively promote school choice, leaving the decisions and the implementation of school choice reforms basically to municipalities themselves. On the other hand, the same Ministry of Education has actively promoted community schools. Since the enactment of the community school system in 2004, the Minis- try of Education has been holding forums or meetings for the promotion of community schools every year. In recent years, in order to promote “schools that coexist with local communities,” the Ministry also established the Community School Planning Committee which discusses strategies for the rapid spread of community schools, and started the practice of appointing community school “meisters”(a German word) who give advice and assistance to boards of education or schools which plan to introduce a community school system (MEXT, 2015a). The view expressed by the Ministry of Education, which emphasized the importance of the stability of public schools and

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their close ties with the local community, seems to be also shared by many municipal boards of education as in the cases of Suginami Ward and Maebashi City. Further, many education researchers have also supported this sort of view. For example, Hidenori Fujita, a member of the above-mentioned National Commission on Education Reform which discussed the establishment of community school system, criticized the character of U.S. charter schools that the new type of public schools would take on. According to Fujita, then a professor of the Graduate School of Ed- ucation at the University of Tokyo, “charter schools in the U.S. are evaluated every ﬁ ve years, and abolished if they cannot meet the contract conditions (conditions for giving charters, including appropriate school management, outcomes of education, composition of students, etc.).” If the community schools would be given this sort of condition, “the schools, with such instabilities, would have a low possibility for suc- cess.” Fujita also recognized the necessity of promoting “good schools rooted in local communities” (Fujita, 2001, pp. 59-61, 70). Steiner-Khamsi (2004) pointed out in her research that “[b]orrowing is not copying,” and that “a policy, once borrowed, was locally adapted and re-contextualized” (pp. 5, 202). In the case of Japanese community schools, at the beginning of the debates, American charter schools were referred to as a model for the new-type of public schools, and its idea of people’s own initiatives was partially borrowed. However, it was locally adapted in a dramatic way and altered to suit the Japanese context, emphasizing stability and ties with local communities. One more point should be made regarding the relations between schools and communities in Japan. Broad recognition of the importance of community ties was intensiﬁ ed after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. After the major disaster, schools have been seen more and more as the center of protection against disasters, as well as of human ties in local communities. The above-cited Report of the Suginami Re- view Committee on School Choice Systems (2012) also mentioned this point (p. 13).

C. Popularity of the Specially Chartered Small School Systems A third feature of school choice reforms in Japan is the popularity of the specially chartered small schools (SCSS) system. As described above, the principle on which the SCSS system was based is to attract students based on unique features. In Sap- poro where the SCSS system originated, the overwhelming majority of students go from the urban center of Sapporo to small suburban schools. In the 2014 academic year, as much as 94% of students in four elementary schools which adopted the SCSS

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system were placed there by the SCSS system (Sapporo, 2014). In a sense, the SCCS is based on the idea of “theme communities” where stakeholders sharing a similar purpose get together. On the other hand, as pointed out before, one important objective behind SCSS systems is to protect local schools in areas hit hard by depopulation and a declining birth rate. In contrast to Sapporo, only a few students in Hanno City in Saitama Prefecture commute from the center to suburban schools. However, even in Hanno, staff at its board of education stated that the objectives were to protect local schools as well as to give students in urban areas another opportunity to study in a diff erent environment. Schools are supported by neighboring communities, and schools play a symbolic role of sustaining local communities, even with the infl ux of children from diff erent areas. Therefore, the SCSS system is also based on the idea of “neighboring communities,” though it is counted as one category of school choice by the Ministry of Education. While free school choice reform has not taken root in Japan, the popularity of the SCSS system seems to entail some possibility of further development of such a school choice system’s giving opportunities to students based on their individual needs and preferences. In both Sapporo and Hanno, students choose distinctive schools that they prefer. In Japan, about 123,000 students are absent from schools more than 30 days per year, of whom about 26,000 were at the elementary school level, and about 97,000 were at the junior high school level during the school year 2014 (MEXT, 2015b, p. 13). The number of students who do not attend schools has increased, and a fairy large number of these students attend facilities called “free schools” (not to be confused with “free school choice”). Free schools are not recognized as part of public school systems, so they are not included among school choice categories. However, how to assist children studying at the facilities including free schools has become a crucial issue. In Japan, it can be said that there are some possibilities of responding to students’ diverse needs through school choice options not based on market mechanisms.

CONCLUSIONS

We set the purpose of this paper to examine policy formation and implementation of school choice reform in Japan from the perspectives of global policy borrowing and local adaptation. Many research studies concerning school choice reform have been conducted in Japan, but there were no studies yet that comprehensively traced policy processes of school choice reform from borrowing and adaptation perspectives.

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To sum up, our major arguments in this study are as follows. First, policy borrowing on school choice from the U.S. and the U.K. took place in Japan when the traditional incremental policy making seemed to fail. However, free public school choice reform did not spread widely or take root in Japan. Second, when the community school system was established, the existing school system was criticized again for not responding to the changing demands of the time, and the U.S. and the U.K. policies, including charter schools, were referred to as possible reform models. However, community schools were eventually institutionalized neither as choice-based, nor as charter-based, but as participation-based schools in local communities. Third, these cases of policy borrowing and local adaptation, as Steiner-Khamsi has pointed out, show that borrowing is not a matter of copying from a foreign policy and some policies once borrowed are locally adapted in dramatic ways. Importantly in Japan, local adaptations have strongly reﬂ ected the traditional emphases on equality, stability and community ties. Fourth, as policy borrowing and local adaptations took place, the specially chartered small school system, which originated in Japan, became popular on a somewhat similar idea to that of magnet schools in the U.S. This is a choice- based system, and, therefore, it relies on the idea of “theme communities.” However, this system is also based on the idea of “neighboring communities” emphasizing ties between schools and local communities.

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（本学教授，東洋大学教授）

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