Arianna Prothero writes in Education Week of the growing evidence that vouchers do not improve achievement and may actually reduce it.

Yet that body of research seems to have no impact on the voucher advocates. At Senate hearings for the #2 spot in the U.S. Department of Education, Mick Zais (Superintendent of Schools in South Carolina) expressed his enthusiasm for School Choice. When about the studies showing the negative effects of vouchers in Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, and D.C., Zais admitted he was “unaware” of this research. Zais, a former Brigadier General, made his mark in South Carolina by lifting limits on class sizes.

She writes:

“What does the research say? In a nutshell: The most recent findings are mixed, but they lean more toward negative.

“I spoke at length with researchers from most of these studies for story I did on how private schools receiving public money in Florida face little state oversight.

“Studies out of Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, and the District of Columbia have found that students, most of whom are low-income, fare worse academically after leaving their public schools.

“But a separate study that looked at low-income students attending private school in Florida with state aid, found that students enrolled in college at higher rates than their peers in public school.

“I think the best evidence from the best recent research … if anything, it looks like that maybe kids going to private school on voucher programs might do worse in reading and math than they do in public [schools],” said David Figlio, an economist at Northwestern University, whose study of vouchers in Ohio for low-income students attending poor-performing districts found voucher students performed significantly worse on state tests than their peers who were eligible for vouchers but remained in public schools.

“His research on Florida’s biggest private-school choice program—the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship—found that on average, attending a private school on an FTC scholarship had zero effect on student academic achievement—which was generally true of most early voucher research, said Figlio.

“There are possible explanations: they’re getting a worse education … they’re getting a different form of education … and I don’t think we really know the truth,” Figlio said. “But I think there’s precious little evidence so far that these kids do better academically.”

“Similarly, negative results were found in a recent study of Washington D.C.’s voucher program as well—the only federally funded voucher program in the nation.

“Students, at least in the Indiana and Louisiana voucher programs, recouped their academic losses after being in private schools for a few years.”

The “recouping” of academic losses may reflect attrition from these programs, especially of the lowest performing students, who return to public schools, worse off than they were before.

Similarly, those voucher programs that show higher college attendance rates (despite zero academic gains) must be viewed in the light of high attrition rates from the voucher programs. If 100 students start ninth grade in voucher schools and only 40 finish twelfth grade, that reduced number may have a higher graduation rate than the public schools that inherited their dropouts.

The best way to understand the ideology of voucher advocates is to remember what Betsy DeVos said when she learned that the federal evaluation of the D.C. voucher program had negative results:

[From the Washington Post]

“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.”

In other words, vouchers should not be expected to improve test scores.