Kevin Carey is the director of education research at the New America Foundation in D.C., a think tank funded by tech magnates.
I am not sure why this is news, because vouchers have been tried out since 1990 in Milwaukee and elsewhere and have been subject to numerous evaluations, almost all of which have reached the same conclusion: vouchers don’t have a significant effect on test scores.
This conclusion has been reported again and again over the past 25 years.
It doesn’t seem to have much effect on the pro-voucher crowd, who have been promising since 1955 (when economist Milton Friedman published his seminal essay about vouchers) that school choice would have dramatic positive effects. Back in 1990, John Chubb and Terry Moe predicted in their book “Politics, Markets, and Schools” that school choice was a “panacea,” and that the problem with schools is that they are democratically controlled. Take away the democratic governance, and all will go well, they said.
Anyone who looks at the many evaluations of the voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, D.C., Indiana, and Louisiana has to search hard for any positive news.
Still, it is good to see this research consensus publicly acknowledged in the New York Times.
Carey is part of the neoliberal Democratic consensus in the D.C. think tank world that favors charters, but not vouchers. So he takes care to say that charters in Massachusetts produce higher test scores than public schools, although he does not note the vote last November in which the people of Massachusetts voted overwhelmingly not to expand the number of charter schools. (He did mention it in his article in the Times last November, when he assured readers that DeVos could not possibly privatize public schools.) Nor does he make any reference to the numerous financial scandals associated with charters schools, nor to their frequent practice of excluding children with special needs and English language learners, nor to the fiscal burden they impose on public schools by draining away resources from them.
Carey is still trying to salvage the charter idea–which DeVos embraces wholeheartedly–from Trump’s wrecking ball approach to public education. The difficulty is that phony reformers like DeVos can use charters to destroy public education as easily as they can use vouchers. Michigan, after all, is a paradise for school choice, as is Florida, and neither has the sort of voucher program that DeVos prefers. They are hotbeds of rapacious, for-profit charter operators.
Neoliberals are caught on the horns of a dilemma. They think they can advance their kind of school choice (charters) while resisting going “all the way” with vouchers. But once you say that school choice is good, it is very tough to draw a line in the sand against vouchers. It is like being just a little bit pregnant. School choice produces community dissension and segregation. Its true forebears are not Milton Friedman but the racist leaders of the South after the Brown decision.
Full disclosure: Carey wrote an unfriendly article about me in The New Republic (referenced in his Wikipedia listing) in 2011. He sought to belittle my scholarship and credentials, although I had just been awarded the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award by the American Academy of Political and Social Science for scholarship in the interest of the public good. That was Carey’s way of defending charters at that time, which was then and remains the favorite idea of the neoliberal consensus in DC. The neoliberals are still trying to save charters from their embrace by DeVos and Trump.
All that is past. I forgive him. I look forward to the day that Carey examines the charter scandals in Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania, and considers what they are doing to the public schools that are defunded by charters. The majority of students still go to public schools, not charter schools, and they have fewer resources as a result of a dual system. If deregulation makes schools better, why not deregulate them all?
But all that aside, I am pleased to see him skewer vouchers, which have failed again and again and again. They don’t help poor kids; they are all about diverting taxpayer monies to nonpublic schools. The majority of the public has consistently said that they don’t want their taxes to fund religious schools. Regardless of the religious school, taxpayers say no. Whenever there is a referendum, they vote against vouchers. But that doesn’t stop DeVos or her allies.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
David,
Tell the Texas legislature
I’m spreading the word as much as I can. Unfortunately, Lt. Dan is hell bent on getting them passed. He doesn’t care if they work or not. He has a large bully pulpit at the moment and it is very unsettling
Wow, Diane.
Thank you. I didn’t have that background. I did find it odd that Carey tap danced around charters.
Take it from someone who lives in Ohio. They’ll just move the goalposts. The rationale will now be “choice for choice sake”. They drop “great schools” in a heartbeat and just move on to Plan B.
I don’t have any problem with the Catholic school where I live so this is not a slam or an insult – we all get along just fine without the help of national ed reformers or consultants- but the truth is our Catholic school tends to get brand new teachers (because they pay so poorly) who then “move up” to the public school when they have more experience. Over and over and over. It’s not a big market. Not everywhere is NYC or Boston.
This has always been true and everyone here knows it. No one ever believed the Catholic school was inherently or presumptively superior and I think it’s weird and disturbing that people who are “researchers” would start with that belief.
You mentioned moving the goal posts. Here is another version of that from a baseball perspective.
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/stop-widening-the-plate/
My experience with students who enrolled into our high school from various Catholic schools in the city was that they were hardly cookie cutter students; some excelled, some failed miserably.
“No one ever believed the Catholic school was inherently or presumptively superior”
In St. Louis, many if not most actually do believe that presumption. Now whether it is true is another story.
Diane, you know they would deregulate all schools in a heartbeat since that would immediately kill all points on which unions participate – not all regulation comes from unions but there is some they do encourage and advocate for, sometimes as part of contract.
I don’t think that’s bad – but – in response to your claim about deregulating all schools – you know they would just love to do so and to say they in any way hedge on that I think is disingenuous .
The reason why they don’t pursue it that way is because it never flies and is too jarring and has too many bad consequences. People like regulations that favor them like class size, and mostly (unscientifically saying this) want to do away with regulations that don’t help them (like wanting funding for religious schools because their kids go there – although many groups are wary of the strings that will come with public funding)
So, they back what they consider the lowest hanging fruit as a camels nose to privatization and deregulation. Examples are numerous such as approving vouchers or scholarships for a particularly afflicted group like the poor and or special needs children, and then just expanding those programs whether they meet the supposed needs of those groups or not to get to that deregulated endpoint.
They do what they do because deregulation and privatization is doable in small doses – until they expand programs enough to collapse the public system.
http://haveyouheardblog.com/the-red-queen/
If they are anything like their Lord Gates, their egos will not permit them to admit they could ever be wrong about anything, so expect them to treble down with MOTS (More Of The Same).
I don’t think any “reformers” are looking for evidence. They are looking to forward their agenda by any means necessary. Now that charters have been forced on the electorate, the next step is to satisfy the voucher zealots. They have no regard for the public schools, and the sad part is that they have bought so many policymakers to invite more bad ideas and policy.
WISH I could FIRE BOTH parties.
Can we infer and say from all these findings about alternative schools, choice and charters, that they produce no significant gains because of the fundamental reality that family life is the number one predictor of educational success (as determined by most multi-variate studies correlating different inputs, predictors, with school success, criteria). So, students go to new and different settings, but return at the end of the day to the same family support, to whatever magnitude it provides.
Family and parental nurturing and support have always been the number one, most-weighted, predictor variable for school success. So, those that believe choice is important are misguided.
Yes, same students, same results, unless interventions are different.
One very important distinction . I will stand corrected by an economist ,if I am wrong . The word liberal in neo liberal a phrase first invented in Latin America to describe the free market economic reforms being proposed by the likes of Milton Friedman ,NOT A LIBERAL !!!!!. Has nothing to do with liberalism . That it was adopted by the Clinton wing of the Democratic party to garner Wall Street cash is the crux of the dilemma we the people find ourselves in. Neo-liberals are perfectly fine with vouchers. Some Democrats who profess to be liberal while betraying Public schools and American workers are not “new liberals” they are Republicans . You do remember what Truman said about Democrats who pretend to be Republican and how the people will chose. .
Choose
The free market the invisible hand that strangles the middle class.
I’ve been thinking about that label, neo-liberalism. I wonder if it is really just a device to make people pat themselves on the back for the “good” they are doing and yet still make a killing off their “charitable” investment. It’s a new kind of liberalism that says you can still get while you give.
Stand corrected by an economist?
Is that even possible in principle?
My thoughts exactly SDP!
‘Dismal’ Results
Results are in
And vouchers win
For Turkish schools
Where Gulen rules