If there is one issue where the WSJ is fanatical, it is school choice. It published an editorial this morning (behind a pay wall) declaring that all the recent negative studies of the effects of vouchers must be wrong, because the Milton Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice says so, and whatever the Friedman Foundation says on the subject of vouchers must be right. Right?

Wrong! The Friedman Foundation lobbies and advocates for vouchers. They are not an unbiased source.

Sara Stevenson, librarian at O. Henry Middle School in Austin, Texas, rides herd on the WSJ editorials and once again corrects them. She is on the honor roll of this blog for her determination and fearlessness as an advocate for a better education for all.

She writes:

“It’s no surprise that the Wall Street Journal accuses progressives of cherry-picking negative data about the effectiveness of private school vouchers. On the other hand, I can turn around and accuse the editorial board of doing the same thing with its positive data. Your bias is so transparent when you quote aggregated data by the Friedman Foundation, failing to report its full name: Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, as in Milton Friedman, the father of school choice.

“Here is some additional data to the “cherry-picked” studies you attempt to refute in your editorial. You get objectivity points for admitting that the voucher experiment in Louisiana, the largest to date, is a failure.

“Please consider these. Full disclosure: I do not work for a think tank nor am I a lobbyist. I am a public middle school librarian who taught for ten years in a Catholic high school.

“According to a Brookings Institute Report by Mark Dynarski in May 2016, both Louisiana and Indiana students who received private school vouchers scored lower on reading and math tests compared to similar students who remained in public schools. As Mr. Dynarski wrote:

“In education as in medicine, ‘first, do no harm’ is a powerful guiding principle. A case to use taxpayer funds to send children of low-income parents to private schools is based on an expectation that the outcome will be positive. These recent findings point in the other direction.”

“Let’s look at some longer-term studies. In 1989, Milwaukee began its Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. That’s over 25 years ago. According to a Public Policy Report, in the years 2012 – 2014, students in Milwaukee public schools were more proficient than their private school choice counterparts in statewide reading and math tests at every grade level (3 – 10).

“Even the DC Opportunity Scholarship program shows no benefits in math, after three years, between students who applied and were selected for a voucher and those who applied and instead continued at public schools.

“Instead of pushing “market choices,” which means winners and losers, let’s work towards a quality education for every child.

Sara Stevenson
Austin, Texas”