A reader in Cleveland comments on today’s post about vouchers in Cleveland. He is responding to a comment by another reader, who defended vouchers:
“I’m from Cleveland. The vouchers worked! They raised the cost of per-pupil expenditures in our public schools and resulted in cuts to funding for arts and enrichment programs, making public schools a less desirable “choice.” See Freakenomics for their take on vouchers. That voucher students at best do more or less the same than their peers in public schools misses what I think is the most important point. The fragmenting of public funds through vouchers/charters compromises the opportunities of public school.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well said. We are fighting the charter school expansion in Arizona. What is the best course of action? At a loss here.
Charters in AZ are out of control. Many are run by incompetent people; many are run for greed, as documented last fall in AZ Republic series about conflicts of interest and self-dealing.
Join with other Arizonans, like Tucson Voices for Children. Alone, you can do nothing. Join others who want to stop the raid on the taxpayer dollars and the destruction of public education.
I am a recently retired teacher from Phoenix, AZ area. We need a Voices for Education here. Let’s start getting others and start one here. My email: rykatco1@gmail.com
Vouchers are a device for liquidating a public good and converting it into a consumer good. The next step, which has already begun, is the abdication of corporate owned governments from any role in funding public schools aside from the redistribution of regressive taxes from the underclasses to corporate, military, and prison training centers.
Jon,
Be careful, you have figured out the “end game” and the folks that run it don’t like things like what you say to be known.
Red Peep or Blue Peep? I always forget …
And what is the Freakonomics take on school choice? Mostly positive: http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/08/27/evidence-on-school-choice/
In the actual book, the authors debunk a study celebrating the impact of vouchers. The initial findings did suggest a positive correlation….perhaps this is what this piece is suggesting. Then, they found the actual operating variable was entering the lottery in the first place. Those students whose parents tried but failed to get a voucher performed just as well as those who got one.
The point Chuck’s made,” those that choose to opt out tend to be smarter and more academically motivated to begin with” a good one as both the winners and failed applicants were motivated to do better. They were looking for better path for education. Both groups attempted to leave the inferior school per their assessment and I would not vote not to take that freedom away. Why both groups did as well probably has little to do with the institution of learning as much as their personal motivation. That’s my key point…open up this education monopoly to provide choice. Choice will motivate students. We should never limit the children to failing school systems. What a curse to inflict on a generation to attempt to turn around some failing system. It’s easy for us to taint the future of kids, meaning to exploit the weak per our biases or passions. Doesn’t cost us much does it? I do think the current old agriculture/frontier system of classroom lecture is obsolete. We have good technology for lecture now. Teachers have to get with the 21st century. Evolve per greatest benefit of your talent. Yes, you do need to be more productive and higher quality. Private business is not the horrible curse you think. It’s what the country does best…it’s American to have open markets with competing ways to accomplish services. You must see the future…it’s already knocking your doors down. Wouldn’t it be a better workplace for you talents if you could convince the feds and bureaucracies to back away. To convince them all their efforts to improve education would be better served to let the teachers compete upon open markets of small businesses. To let the open market weed out inferior systems and pursue excellence per the normal economies of choice and consumer info? Deregulate this industry, put the teachers in charge, provide seed money, invigorate small education craft marketplace. Local, open, customized, and totally dependent per normal business enterprise on consumer satisfaction.
Those weren’t vouchers. It was a choice among tradition district public schools. Apples and orangoutangs.
Forest, I can tell you haven’t read very much of this blog. The give-away is when you write, “put the teachers in charge.” One of the MOs of the school deform movement is to take all authority AWAY from teachers and to dictate their every move.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt; if your heart really is in the right place, you’ll do some more reading and correct yourself. If you’re only a troll, well, I guess I wasted a minute and some pixels.
Traditional public schools do not typically offer choices between buildings, at least in my neck of the woods. Perhaps a sort of hybrid?
From the actual book…
So what do the data reveal?
The answer will not be heartening to obsessive parents: in this case, school choice barely mattered at all. It is true that the Chicago students who entered the school-choice lottery were more likely to graduate than the students who didn’t—which seems to suggest that school choice does make a difference. But that’s an illusionThe proof is in this comparison: the students who won the lottery and went to a “better” school did no better than equivalent students who lost the lottery and were left behind.
That is, a student who opted out of his neighborhood school was more likely to graduate whether or not he actually won the opportunity to go to a new school. What appears to be an advantage gained by going to a new school isn’t connected to the new school at all. What this means is that the students—and parents—who choose to opt out tend to be smarter and more academically motivated to begin with. But statistically, they gained no academic benefit by changing schools.
That was a study of choice among public schools, not private school vouchers.
What Freakonomics says is nothing as compared to state test scores for Milwaukee and Cleveland, which show there is no difference in test scores between the two sectors.
Click to access Public_Schools_Edge_in_Math_Lubienski.pdf
Generally, public schools “outperformed” private and charter schools when student variables are accounted for.
The study can’t support those claims because NAEP does NOT track individual student over time. Even the authors of the study concede that.
http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-weekly/2006/february-2/charter-private-public-schools-and-academic-achievement-new-evidence-from-naep-mathematics-data.html
This analysis of US mathematics achievement finds that, after accounting for the fact that private schools serve more advantaged populations, public schools perform remarkably well, often outscoring private and charter schools.
Ok, so it doesn’t “track students over time.” I put “outperformed” in quotations because I don’t want to equate test scores with school/education quality. When they said “often outscoring private and charter schools” they are of cross making a cross-sectional comparison. The gold standard–pure random assignment–is not available, so our best evidence comes from controlled studies….and, the preponderance of those shows no advantage for private/charter schools over traditional public schools. See Cleveland and Mlwalkee.
By the way, the narrow statement I made is absolutely supported by the research. You can argue that the outcome variables are too constricted, or that the extraneous variables weren’t adequately controlled. Speaking purely, cause and effect inferences–as the discussion in Fordham and the National Review suggest–cannot be made. The study was such a disappointment tot he Bush administration that it was released without comment.
To say “outperformed” is a statement of fact. How it is interpreted is, as always, a matter of intepretatation.
As in “Orwellian Doublespeak” their win is really a loss. Just smoke and mirrors.
From my vantage point, Public Ed is losing public support. Parents see no danger in choice as well as public in large. Cost of education is spiraling up with historically little evidence of improving student competence. Even worse when comparing to international standards. Citizens tire of the high taxes and unending political shenanigans. They tire of political activism and union politics. Also, as so popular on the blog, regulations that constrain. Now, you may be more sympathetic to the cost of regulations. Think of central control elitist whom have no cost (dog in the fight) micromanaging the environment, labor, business, education and banking. The process is fraught with corruption per politics, money, and biases. A way out of the malaise, would be to let Public Ed dwindle per normal life cycle economics. Push the education service to open market and create a new energetic sector full of ideas, freedom, entrepreneurial teachers whom think out of the Titanic. What you folk impute as “Private” is much more democratic than the current no choice mandatory system. This sector would be unregulated as the normal market forces would ensure quality and cost effectiveness. The danger being if the sector could be infected per crony capitalism influences. This appears to be popular within national politics and very corrupting. Perhaps the best prevention…never corrupt the sector with direct government capital.
By the way, the national and international economic trends will greatly affect the tax dollars available. Were heading to a corner with solutions only digging the hole deeper. Economic headwinds will be severe and both political parties incapable of leveling with citizens on the future. Education is at the zenith of tax dollars available. Lots of disruptions headed your way. Best, to get ahead of the tsunami.