Voucher advocates have protected D.C.’s voucher program, known as “Opportunity Scholarships,” since it was created in 2004 despite lack of strong evidence for its benefits. Evaluations have found little or no improvement in test scores. This new evaluation shows negative effects on test scores in the elementary grades for those who enrolled in voucher schools. This echoes studies in Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio, where voucher students lost ground as compared to their peers who were offered vouchers but stayed in public schools. In the past, the D.C. evaluation team was led by Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas, the high temple of school choice. The evaluation team for this new study was led by Mark Dynarski of Pemberton Research and a group of Westat researchers. Dynarski, you may recall, wrote a paper for the Brookings Institution calling attention to the negative impact of vouchers in Louisiana and Indiana. Previous evaluations showed higher graduation rates in voucher schools, but also–as is now customary in voucher schools–high rates of attrition. Of those who don’t drop out and return to public schools, the graduation rate is higher.
The Washington Post reports:
Students in the nation’s only federally funded school voucher initiative performed worse on standardized tests within a year after entering D.C. private schools than peers who did not participate, according to a new federal analysis that comes as President Trump is seeking to pour billions of dollars into expanding the private school scholarships nationwide.
The study, released Thursday by the Education Department’s research division, follows several other recent studies of state-funded vouchers in Louisiana, Indiana and Ohio that suggested negative effects on student achievement. Critics are seizing on this data as they try to counter Trump’s push to direct public dollars to private schools.
Vouchers, deeply controversial among supporters of public education, are direct government subsidies parents can use as scholarships for private schools. These payments can cover all or part of the annual tuition bills, depending on the school.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has long argued that vouchers help poor children escape from failing public schools. But Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, said that DeVos should heed the department’s Institute of Education Sciences. Given the new findings, Murray said, “it’s time for her to finally abandon her reckless plans to privatize public schools across the country.”
DeVos defended the D.C. program, saying it is part of an expansive school-choice market in the nation’s capital that includes a robust public charter school sector.
“When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools,” she said in a statement. She added that the study found that parents “overwhelmingly support” the voucher program “and that, at the same time, these schools need to improve upon how they serve some of D.C.’s most vulnerable students.”
DeVos’ statement suggests that neither vouchers nor charters will ever outperform public schools. The goal of choice is choice, not better academic achievement or better education, not to “save poor kids from failing schools,” but to provide choice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Does it matter, though? Ed reform has moved the goalposts. Now “choice” itself is the focus of ed reform.
Any school qualifies as long as it’s not a public school.
Using that pyritic coin of the realm known as standardized test scores can ONLY result in error-filled and false conclusions. It is a perfect example of the “Crap in, crap out” principle.
One cannot make a filet mignon with ground beef.
Now one can make a fine Foie gras with the livers from many dead ducks/geese.
The standardized testing proponents want you to believe that they’ve made a statistical foie gras from the brains of the students but not wanting you to know that they have killed many student minds in the process.
Yet we continue to use standardized test scores, student’s brain matter on our hands, as the coin of the realm,
How to keep student minds alive in a world where standardized tests and their “slay days” are (almost) all encompassing is a truly difficult problem. I doubt a government run school any longer has enough wise teacher souls or small enough classes to do so. Ergo, small private schools, real people for teachers (instead of the ideologically brain dead), and vouchers, vouchers, vouchers. Pity though, that REFORM has to require DESTRUCTION of a once great public good. Zombie Robots (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) is all we can expect these days coming out of schools that don’t know how to fix the traumatized, poor, and neglected.
“How to keep student minds alive in a world where standardized tests and their “slay days” are (almost) all encompassing is a truly difficult problem.”
Yes, it is. Unfortunately those who call themselves “conservatives”, who are really reactionary regressives, along with the bought off whore Dimocraps like DFER, Duncan, Cuomo, Emmanuel, etc. . . have pushed those democratic community public schools to the brink of disaster with the paucity of funding and the excess of illogical and invalid mandates.
“I doubt a government run [sic] school any longer has enough wise teacher souls or small enough classes to do so.”
Yes, it is getting to that point where many of us veteran teachers have been chased off and the TFA-like two year temporary non-certified teachers now take up too many positions. Young inexperienced teachers are far easier to control than those that know their craft through years of experience. And thanks to the likes of Billy the Gatesby many are lead to believe a “great” teacher can handle class sizes of up to 50 physically and mentally immature human beings. You and I, and the vast majority of posters here know that it isn’t so.
Why we expect the community public schools to be able to “fix the traumatized, poor and neglected” that are caused by larger socio-economic forces is beyond my thinking also.
Just another reason to vote little teddy out of office.