Three cities have had vouchers in recent years. Milwaukee, Cleveland, and DC.
As I pointed out in an earlier post, vouchers did not improve test scores in either Milwaukee or DC.
They also failed to make a difference in Cleveland. See here also.
Voucher advocates should stop lying to poor parents.
Vouchers do not increase test scores.
They just serve to undermine public education.
Isn’t it time to pay attention to evidence?
Why so much faith-based policy?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
There is no way on earth that vouchers could solve the educational inequities in this country. I’ve written repeatedly on how utterly short they fall in providing poor people access to the sorts of schools the wealthy and upper-middle classes already have access to for their kids. Vouchers will never bridge the economic chasm, nor will they lead to acceptance by such schools of the vast, vast majority of poor children, particularly those of color. The only people well-served by vouchers are religious schools and those people who are just on the edge of being able to afford elite schools now. Of course the wealthy will enjoy getting a public contribution to their children’s education, but of course they don’t need the help.
I am in full agreement as a professional who has always worked in the nation’s wealthiest communities! It is not the fault of family engagement! It is plainly, simply, and clearly an economic issue!
Why so much faith-based policy, indeed? This is a question I have been asking a lot lately. The justification seems to be that things are SO bad, ANYTHING different is probably an improvement! And any argument against the proposed changes is also faith-based, because there’s no data showing they DON’T work!
And even if there IS evidence they don’t work — what are you, a TEACHER-LOVER? Hey, boys, we gots us a TEACHER-LOVER over here!!! *TEACHER-LOVER*!!!
For another point of view, here are some quotes from Patrick Wolf’s editorial from a week ago (Wolf is the person Diane focuses on in her first link to demonstrate that vouchers don’t work):
http://goo.gl/t45rA
“Do scholarship programs work? Nine different research teams have conducted 12 rigorous evaluations of these types of programs over the past 17 years. Eleven of those studies have reported at least some positive findings and no negative results from private school choice. People who claim there is no evidence that opportunity scholarship or “voucher” programs work clearly are not paying attention.”
“For example, the Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington, D.C., produced $2.62 in benefits for every dollar spent on it. That was the major finding from a follow-up study I completed based on the results of the official U.S. Department of Education evaluation of the program, which I led.”
“Milwaukee hosts the oldest and largest urban school choice initiative, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. My research team confirmed that the program increases the rates of high school graduation, college enrollment and progress through college by 6-7 percentage points. Students also score higher in reading as a result of the MPCP. The private school choice program delivers these better outcomes for students while saving Wisconsin taxpayers more than $50 million per year, since the maximum scholarship amount is less than half what the government spends on Milwaukee public school students.”
Here’s another post that goes through all of the research as of a couple of years ago:
http://goo.gl/9EX99
My basic thoughts:
1. Voucher research, like almost all academic research on education, is frustrated by people on both sides claiming victory while leaving the rest of us confused.
2. It is interesting that anti-voucher people don’t claim that voucher schools are worse than public schools. They only claim that they aren’t better. Apparently that makes the voucher experiment a travesty. (That was sarcastic.)
3. Best I can tell, in most voucher programs we spend a fraction on vouchers versus what we spend on the comparable traditional public schools. It’s a massive difference that I’ve never seen Diane address.
4. As usual, I’d love to see Diane debate someone like Patrick Wolf, Jay Greene, Greg Forster, or Marcus Winters on vouchers one-on-one. (Maybe that has happened?) It might be more illuminating than one-sided blog posts.
Ken Hirsh: Funny that Wolf is an “independent” evaluator of vouchers in both DC and Milwaukee yet writes an opinion piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in honor of school choice week, in which he says Minnesota needs more school choice. He even makes the laughable claim that Minnesota is in danger of falling behind Arkansas. If this suggests “independent,” then we define the word differently. I consider Wolf like his mentor Paul Peterson to be a well-trained advocate for choice.
See my point #1. I view both you and Wolf (and many other smart and capable people) as advocates more than academics. Sometimes, sadly, the result is more heat than light.
Ken, 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 i 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
students.
No, Dr. Ravitch has provided proof that they don’t work. The arguments are faith-based because the proponents don’t believe in science.
Dr. Ravitch has observed that voucher programs have no worse outcomes than the public schools. If that is the case, then the added element of choice might be considered a plus. For a variety of reasons, a parent might prefer to have her child in a faith sponsored school. Those defending public schools prefer to ignore that, and generally to discard religion as a reason for wanting a child in such a school. Fortunately, taxpayers are still citizens, even religious taxpayers, and through their elected representatives, i.e. Scott Walker, they can still influence education policy away from the previous educational monopoly of the public schools. That’s democracy.
Why should my taxes support religious truth claims?
That’s special interest politics, not democracy.
You would do it for the good of the community.
J. H. Underhill
Parents think that just because their child moves to a different school via voucher that they will magically improve. Parents fail to realize that in order for their child to improve academically they need to be involved. Changing schools isn’t the magic bullet that many parents think it is. You need to be involved as a parent, doing that will help your child.
Perhaps the motivation behind vouchers is not to improve learning on the part of the children who are awarded them, but to make it unnecessary for them to attend school with children who are different from them—not that it would matter to the children, but that it does to their parents, though they would deny it.
Yep. That’s a major motivation behind charters, too, at least where I’m from. Then kids don’t have to be “exposed” to “those” other kids.
In a story sighted here last summer a parent in Detroit ctrd increased safety as the reason she choose a charter school over the traditional zoned school for her student. It seems like a reasonable decision to make.
Cited of course, not cited.
You mean “sighted” of course, not “cited”?
Not in my experience. Both children and parents welcome the opportunity to get out of chaotic, and sometimes even unsafe, environments. I hardly see how you can blame them for that.
Your comment confirms my suspicion.
I have frankly never been a fan of vouchers: lottery tickets with no investment advice. Vouchers are false hope in a broken system. Correct the basic concern and allow any child move freely based on child-care needs, parent schedules, or after work teens. Then, a free public education of value is available to all citizens. Vouchers don’t move Robeson High School students to New Trier High School, or East Tech High School students to Orange High School.
The original incomplete deck gets shuffled based on the missing cards and we expect someone to win a fair game without a proper set of tools! This entire house of cards is finally falling!
Dr. Dianna Lindsay: beautifully stated.
Krazy props for a memorable posting.
🙂
Thank you! I remain watching but eager to act responsibly!
Nothing moves a student to New Trier High School other than having the money to move into the township. That education is certainly not “available to all students”.
There has been an interesting shift in the argument from voucher supporters. The argument is no longer that they improve achievement, the argument is that students who received vouchers graduated high school at higher rates than non-voucher students.
On the claim that students who get vouchers have a higher graduation rate.
The claim was made by the “independent” evaluator in Milwaukee, but his own report showed that 75% of the students in the voucher school study dropped out and returned to public schools before reaching high school graduation.
So, of the 25% that stayed in the voucher schools, they had a higher graduation rate.
And the “independent” evaluator, bear in mind, is a voucher supporter!