You are here: Home / Archives for vouchers

Do vouchers boost achievement?

July 29, 2011 By

Vouchers have “no clear positive effect” on student achievement and mixed outcomes overall, according to a review of 27 studies by the Center on Education Policy. From Ed Week‘s Inside Schools Research:

Low-income students receiving vouchers made similar achievement gains to comparable public school students in district schools in several studies, the report found.

The report also noted that some research found that voucher students graduate at a higher rate than their public school peers, and that overall achievement at public schools was higher in those schools most affected by voucher competition. However, the report said it is difficult to tease out causation in those results, because schools most affected by vouchers often are targeted for other intensive school reform efforts.

The CEP review did not include privately funded vouchers or tax credits or voucher programs for students with disabilities or students in foster care.

“CEP’s study narrowly cherry-picks school choice studies in a handful of states and inaccurately characterizes the results of these studies,” said Andrew Campanella, a spokesman for the American Federation for Children, a voucher advocacy program based in Washington.

A rival analysis of voucher research by the Foundation for Educational Choice found large benefits for some programs, but modest gains for most.  No voucher studies have found a negative effect, said Greg Forster, a senior fellow at the foundation. “When the small, restricted programs produce moderately positive results, that indicates we should be trying bigger things,” Forster said.

 

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , ,

Gates: Was the $5 billion worth it?

July 25, 2011 By

After spending $5 billion on education grants and scholarships, Bill Gates tells the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley,  “It’s been about a decade of learning.”

The Microsoft co-founder’s foundation is worth $34 billion, more than the next three largest foundations (Ford, Getty and Robert Wood Johnson) combined.

Small schools, an early Gates Foundation initiative, didn’t improve achievement. I was impressed by the foundation’s willingness to admit that.

Small schools improved students’ attendance and behavior, but “didn’t move the needle much” on college attendance, which is a foundation priority, Bill Gates told Riley.  “We didn’t see a path to having a big impact, so we did a mea culpa on that.”

The foundation decided to focus on curriculum — Gates strongly backs a core curriculum — and teacher quality — the foundation is researching what makes good teachers effective.

Many worry that a multi-billionaire has too much power, even if his intentions are noble. (And not everyone thinks they are.) And Gates tells Riley he’s trying to use his money to influence how public money is spent.

 Instead of trying to buy systemic reform with school-level investments, a new goal is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent.

However, the foundation’s approach is scientific, not political, Gates say.

“I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.” Compared with R&D spending in the pharmaceutical or information-technology sectors, he says, next to nothing is spent on education research. “That’s partly because of the problem of who would do it. Who thinks of it as their business? The 50 states don’t think of it that way, and schools of education are not about research. So we come into this thinking that we should fund the research.”

Gates supports charters — he’s a KIPP fan — but not school vouchers.

. . .  the politics, he says, are just too tough right now. “We haven’t chosen to get behind [vouchers] in a big way, as we have with personnel systems or charters, because the negativity about them is very, very high.”

Gates’ approach is doomed to fail, responds Jay Greene. While trying to influence education policy is sensible, “education does not lend itself to a single ‘best’ approach.” The foundation invokes science “to advance practices and policies they prefer for which they have no scientific support,” Greene charges.

Attempting to impose particular practices on the nation’s education system is generating more political resistance than even the Gates Foundation can overcome, despite their focus on political influence and their devotion of significant resources to that effort.

Greene’s part 2 on the Gates Foundation is here.

In a new mini-book, Greene advocates school choice as the way to create incentives for school improvement.  Here’s his interview with Jason Riley.

Community College Spotlight, which I write for the Hechinger Institute, is funded, in part, by Gates money. Gates is funding almost every innovative idea involving community colleges, notably research on how to improve remediation and boost graduation rates. I think it’s money well spent, though the research isn’t likely to find a silver bullet.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2011 is ‘year of school choice’

July 7, 2011 By

Republican electoral gains have made 2011 The Year of School Choice, writes the Wall Street Journal.

No fewer than 13 states have enacted school choice legislation in 2011, and 28 states have legislation pending. Last month alone, Louisiana enhanced its state income tax break for private school tuition; Ohio tripled the number of students eligible for school vouchers; and North Carolina passed a law letting parents of students with special needs claim a tax credit for expenses related to private school tuition and other educational services.

Wisconsin removed the cap of 22,500 on the number of kids who can participate in Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program, the nation’s oldest voucher program, and expanded school choice in Racine County.

Even more significant, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed legislation that removes the charter cap, allows all universities to be charter authorizers, and creates a voucher program that enables about half the state’s students to attend public or private schools.

Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma have created or expanded tuition tax credit programs. North Carolina and Tennessee eliminated caps on the number of charter schools. Maine passed its first charter law. Colorado created a voucher program in Douglas County that will provide scholarships for private schools. In Utah, lawmakers passed the Statewide Online Education Program, which allows high school students to access course work on the Internet from public or private schools anywhere in the state.

Pushed by House Speaker John Boehner, Congress revived the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher program for low-income students.

Choice doesn’t guarantee excellent schools, the Journal concedes. But it drives reform by eroding “the union-dominated monopoly that assigns children to schools based on where they live.”

I’ll be very interested to see what happens in Indiana.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , ,

Indiana OKs broad voucher bill

May 5, 2011 By

The nation’s most sweeping school voucher program — with tuition aid for low- and middle-income families — is now law in Indiana. Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the bill today, along with another bill expanding charter schools.

Parents can choose to use vouchers at private schools that accept state regulation, including religious schools. As family income rises to $60,000 for a family of four, the voucher’s value will go down.

Other voucher systems across the country are limited to lower-income households, children with special needs or those in failing schools.

Indiana’s program would be open to a much larger pool of students, including those already in excellent schools. Indiana’s program will be limited to just 7,500 students for the first year and 15,000 in the second, a fraction of the state’s about 1 million students. But within three years, there will be no limit on the number of children who could enroll.

Indiana will save money on voucher students: Vouchers for elementary and middle school students are capped at $4,500 and no voucher will equal funding for public-school students.

According to Rick Hess, 60 percent of Indiana schoolchildren will be eligible for a voucher worth up to 90 percent of public education costs. The student must attend a year of public school to qualify for a voucher.

The bill also gives a $1,000 tax deduction for private-school tuition or the costs of homeschooling. That’s expected to cut revenues by $3 million.

While most choice advocates are celebrating, Cato’s Adam Schaeffer argues the law is a “strategic defeat for educational freedom” because it greatly expands state regulation of participating private schools.

To qualify for vouchers, schools will have to administer state exams and submit data on students’ progress, admit students by lottery and “provide good citizenship instruction” that stresses respecting authority, the property of others, the student’s parents and home, the student’s self and “the rights of others to have their own views and religious beliefs.”

What does this mean for religious private schools teaching that one can only be saved by belief in Jesus Christ?

Private schools that refuse to be regulated will risk losing most of their students,   Schaeffer writes.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Vouchers pass Indiana Senate

April 21, 2011 By

Indiana’s Senate has passed a school voucher bill that includes tuition aid for middle-income families. The bill has passed the House in similar form. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels is a strong supporter.

Under the plan, a family of four earning less than $41,000 a year would be eligible for a tuition voucher of up to $4,500 for grades 1-8, and up to $4,964 for high school.

A family of four with an income between $41,000 and $61,000 would be eligible for a voucher of up to $2,758 for all grades.

Some 7,500 vouchers will be available in the fall, with 15,000 vouchers available for 2012-13.

The Senate changed the legislation to require private schools participating in the voucher program teach American history and government, maintain a selection of patriotic readings and not advocate the violent overthrow of the government.

With so many Indiana families eligible for tuition aid, it will be fascinating to see how this plays out. Will kids from $60,000-a-year families crowd out lower-income students?

Gov. Daniels has signed a bill limiting teachers’ collective-bargaining ability.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , ,

D.C. vouchers advance, despite Obama

March 30, 2011 By

Washington, D.C.’s voucher program could be back: On a 225-195 vote, mostly along party lines, the House passed Speaker John Boehner’s bill reauthorizing and expanding vouchers for low-income students in the District. Under SOAR, students would get $8,000 to attend a private K-8 school, $12,000 for high school tuition.

SOAR will have a tougher time in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

President Obama is “strongly opposed” to SOAR, but he hasn’t threatened a veto.  In a statement yesterday, the administration claimed, “Rigorous evaluation over several years demonstrates that the D.C. program has not yielded improved student achievement by its scholarship recipients compared to other students in D.C.”

That’s not what the rigorous evaluator said in congressional testimony, notes the Washington Post in a pro-voucher editorial. Patrick J. Wolf, the principal investigator who studied the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for the U.S. Education Department, said on Feb. 16:

“In my opinion, by demonstrating statistically significant experimental impacts on boosting high school graduation rates and generating a wealth of evidence suggesting that students also benefited in reading achievement, the DC OSP has accomplished what few educational interventions can claim: It markedly improved important education outcomes for low-income inner-city students.”

In addition, writes the Post, parents say the program lets their children “attend safer schools or ones that strongly promote achievement.”

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarships also raised graduation rates, Jay Greene adds. Wolf’s study (pdf) concluded: Some 82 percent of students offered a voucher completed high school, compared to 70 percent for the control group.

Obama’s anti-voucher move will make it hard to get bipartisan agreement on rewriting the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, writes Mike Petrilli on Education Next. “Many Republicans will refuse to play ball with an Administration not willing to compromise on a top GOP priority.”

Yesterday, I linked to a study concluding that Milwaukee voucher students don’t outperform similar students in the city’s public schools.

But Milwaukee voucher students are more likely to graduate from high school and go on to a four-year college than similar public school students, writes Jay Greene, citing a study (pdf) released today by University of Kentucky researchers.

Attending a private school with a voucher resulted in about a 7 percentage point improvement in the probability of attending a four year college.  Considering that is a move from about 32% to 39% attending 4 year college, it is a big effect.

Compared to similar public school students, voucher students do worse in the early grades but perform better in the older grades. After three years, “rates of achievement growth are statistically similar.”

Indiana’s House has passed a voucher bill that would provide tuition aid to children from low- and middle-income families earning up to $60,000 a year.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Scores aren’t higher for Milwaukee voucher students

March 29, 2011 By

Milwaukee voucher students score lower in math and the same in reading as similar public school students, according to new state test results.  Math proficiency averaged 34.4 percent for voucher students, who come from low-income families, compared to 43.9 percent for low-income district students. Reading proficiency averaged 55.2 percent for voucher students, 55.3 percent for low-income public school students. (The voucher students are slightly poorer.)

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wants to drop enrollment caps and income limits for the voucher program, which allows children to attend private schools, including many religious schools.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , ,

Study: Vouchers work

March 25, 2011 By

School vouchers improve outcomes for students — and induce public schools to improve, claims Greg Forster in an analysis of 10 studies that used random assignment of students.

Nine studies find that vouchers improve student outcomes, six that all students benefit and three that some benefit and some are not affected. One study finds no visible impact. None of these studies finds a negative impact.

In addition, 18 of 19 empirical studies found public schools improved in response to vouchers. Only in Washington D.C., where the program was   “designed to shield public schools from the impact of competition,” was there no visible improvement.

Voucher benefits “are sometimes large, but are usually more modest in size,” Forster concluded. “This is not surprising since the programs themselves are modest — curtailed by strict limits on the students they can serve, the resources they provide, and the freedom to innovate.”

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: ,

Colorado county OKs vouchers

March 17, 2011 By

Up to 500 students will receive $4,575 vouchers to attend private schools in Douglas County, Colorado this fall. The school board voted 7-0 Tuesday for the plan, which is not restricted to low-income students. A private philanthropy has promised to provide additional aid to low-income families who want to enroll their children in private schools that charge more than the voucher amount.

Participating private schools must monitor attendance and give  state exams to voucher students. Religious schools can take voucher students, as long as they’re not required to participate in religious activities.

The county will retain one-quarter of the state funding per student, an estimated $1,525. If all 500 vouchers are used, the district will have $762,500 to administer the voucher program, pay legal expenses and potentially fund other needs.

Surprisingly, the Douglas County teachers union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, did not oppose the plan.

“We applaud the district and teachers for working collaboratively … to ensure money will not leave a budget with scarce resources, holds all participating schools accountable and provides an equal opportunity for all our students,” teachers union President Brenda Smith said in a written statement. “We will continue to monitor its implementation.”

School board members said the pilot “will save the district money, encourage healthy competition and vest school choice where it belongs – with families,” reports Education News Colorado.

“The system isn’t broken but we want to make it better,” (Board President John) Carson said of the high-performing district. “It’s time for more choice, competition and innovation in our public education system.”

A legal challenge is certain. The board’s lawyer points out that a statewide voucher plan was ruled unconstitutional because it infringed on local school boards’ authority. That argument wouldn’t apply to the Douglas County pilot.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

School choice programs grow

February 13, 2011 By

Twenty private-school choice programs now serve nearly 200,000 children in 12 states and the District of Columbia, reports Alliance For School Choice’s new yearbook.

Nearly all choice programs target children in low- to middle-income families or children with disabilities.

Choice programs that enable students to attend private schools are boosting achievement, the yearbook concludes.

Specific studies conducted in Milwaukee, Washington, D.C. and Florida last year also showed as much as a 68 percent improvement in standardized test scores for school choice participants, graduation rates more than 20 percent higher than traditional public school students, and almost universal parent satisfaction in some programs.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman has scheduled hearings Wednesday on “Saving the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program” (vouchers).

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »