I posted this study a month or so ago. But I continue to get inquiries from school board members in states that are considering the adoption of vouchers. I heard today that this study may have killed vouchers in Tennessee, at least for now (true believers never give up). Make sure that every member of your state school board and every member of your state legislature gets a copy of this study. The study was completed by researchers at MIT.
The study is titled “School Vouchers and Student Achievement: First-Year Evidence from the Louisiana Scholarship Program.” Granted, this is only the first year, but the findings are strong and devastating to the belief that vouchers (most of which go to religious schools) will “save poor kids from failing public schools.” The study compared the test scores of lottery winners and lottery losers, which is supposedly the gold standard for voucher research.
In brief, the students who attended voucher schools lost ground academically. Attendance at a voucher private school lowered math scores by 0.4 standard deviation and increased the likelihood of a failing score by 50 percent. Voucher effects for reading, science, and social studies were also “negative and large.” The negative impacts of vouchers were consistent across all income groups. Apparently the voucher schools were the weakest private schools and were not as good as the so-called “failing public schools.”
A summary of the study appeared in The Economist magazine in the issue of February 6, 2016. If your legislator won’t read the study from MIT, maybe they will read the one-page summary in the libertarian magazine.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
One problem that seems to arise is the use of poor test scores to validate the ineffectiveness of voucher or charter schools when so many of us think the tests are poor and prove nothing about publuc schools.
I agree that the voucher idea does nothing to advance education, but it is a dilemma to determine how poor they may be when we are stuck with using such a bad tool of evaluation.
Agreed, Deb. Test scores are a bad way to judge school quality. But that’s the premise of school choice. The reformers created the game. They can’t get away with closing public schools because of test scores, then say that test scores don’t matter for charters and vouchers
Your clarification of this is so exact! In the effort to get yet more control over educational funding, Big Money uses test scores as the means to close and abuse PUBLIC schools; it has little relevance otherwise.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The MIT study that reveals failing voucher schools across the country—much worse than the so-called “failing public schools” that billionaire oligarchs and for-profit corporations want to replace.
Does it matter? The voucher stuff is pure, distilled ideology. Well, pure ideology and a marriage of political convenience between various factions of ed reform.- “liberals” get the charters they want and “conservatives” get the vouchers want and public schools are completely ignored and get nothing. Standard ed reform, in other words.
The ultimate goal is to give each child a “backpack voucher” and eradicate public schools. I don’t think the far Right ed reform faction hide the ball on that.
Interesting study, Diane. I had not seen this before. For that program, vouchers clearly didn’t work. However, I think you left out the analysis of whether the participating private schools were representative in general. Those participating in the voucher program had an enrollment decline of 10%+ over the previous decade whereas the non-voucher, private schools had enrollment growth. Quite a difference. It could very well be the underperforming schools were looking for new customers and used the vouchers to fill those slots.
This confirms the need for private schools, certainly those who benefit from vouchers, and charter schools to be transparent about their results. It would be interesting to see the VAMs from those private schools. That is the best way to determine which ones are achieving success for their students.
“This confirms the need for private schools. . .”
Any one can open a private school anytime they wish. There are no laws against such occurring. So feel free to do so, vgsp, but not with any tax monies. The Catholic church has been doing it for centuries. Give it a go, vsgp!
This research was also the subject of this podcast, American Radio Works, 2/4/2016 When School Vouchers Are Not a Leg Up.
Florida voucher students only get tested in reading and math; whereas, public schools get graded based on reading, writing, math, and science in prior years and now ELA, math, science and social studies. Also, there needs to be 30 students enrolled in a voucher school in order for testing results for a school to be published; whereas, public schools only need 10 students.
According to the Florida Tax Credit final report for 2013-14, 10% of voucher students were not tested (7.9% of the 10% was for missing/unusable tests).
“I heard today that this study may have killed vouchers in Tennessee, ”
Where can I read about this? I never thought politicians’ opinion can be changed by research.
There was an op Ed piece in all places Bloomberg Views……
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-12/school-choice-lotteries-fail-to-make-a-difference