The Center for American Progress published a useful review of voucher research, which concludes that going to a voucher school is equivalent to losing 1/3 of a year of schooling. Over the past year or so, I have posted the individual studies of vouchers as they appeared, and it is helpful to have them summarized in one place.
The authors of this research review—Ulrich Boser, Meg Bender, and Erin Roth—are senior analysts at CAP. They have done a good job in pulling together the many studies and analyzing the negative effects of vouchers on children. Researchers do not agree on the wisdom of converting test score gains or losses into “days of learning,” a strategy invented by researchers at CREDO, but the authors here use the device against the choice advocates who use it to bash public schools.
CAP is a puzzle to me. Throughout the Obama years, it was a safe haven and cheerleading squad for everything associated with the Obama administration, including the failed, odious, and ineffective Race to the Top.
As this carefully researched paper makes clear, CAP opposes vouchers. But where is CAP on charters? Is it still defending the Obama-Duncan line that school choice is good and traditional public schools are not? Is it willing to do the same research-based review of charters that it did of vouchers?
Does CAP still believe in school choice? Does it support half of the Trump-DeVos agenda? Or will it help return the Democratic Party to its roots by acknowledging the importance of strong public schools, democratically governed, subject to state and federal laws, doors open to all?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Center-for-American-Progre-in-General_News-Diane-Ravitch_Public-Education_School-Reform_Vouchers-180322-610.html#comment694011
with this comment
“Indiana offers a look at what vouchers do and DO NOT do!The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette succinctly explains that vouchers have failed in Indiana.
http://www.journalgazette.net/opinion/editorials/20180311/cost-benefit-stats-show-failures-of-voucher-plan
Taxpayers will shell out $153 million this year for vouchers.
The Fort Wayne public schools will lose $19 million. The schools of Indianapolis public schools will lose $20 million. In what universe does it make sense to take away money, teachers, and programs from the vast majority of students to subsidize religious schools for a tiny minority of students?
Almost anyone can get a voucher, but not many students or families want them. According to the latest report, cited in the Journal Gazette editorial, only 3.11% of the students in the state use them. Only 4.25% enroll in charters. An additional 4.44% attend private schools without a voucher. In traditional public schools are 88.2%, and no one in the Indiana legislature gives a thought to the overwhelming number in public schools or the damage that vouchers and charters do to them.
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As a practical matter, charters are the opening wedge for vouchers and every other form of privatization, no matter the dis-ingenuousness or self-deception of liberal so-called education reformers.
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co-location of a charter into an existing traditional public school typically turns into case after case of the co-located parasite killing off the host, despite endless promises against this from district leaders
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The De Blasio Department of Education is closing a very successful small elementary school in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, which enrolls significant numbers of students with disabilities, yet is one of the most successful public elementary schools in the city. It has 98 students and the city and the district superintendent should be singing its praises and recruiting more students. But the city instead plans to empty the building and critics fear that the co-located charter (Eva) wants the whole building and will get it.
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such a painful, and such a nationally repeated, truth
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Diane,
I don’t know much about the de Blasio DOE closing the small elementary school in Bed Stuy but I find it hard to believe that the DOE would decide to empty the building and close a successful school for no reason. Even if they were emptying the school for Moskowitz’ sake, why wouldn’t they move the successful school elsewhere? Is there something more to that story?
I’m not doubting it — just thinking there is more to it. I know the PEP have stopped some of the de Blasio closures. But de Blasio has not been quick to close schools. I believe it is possible he is making a very bad decision to close this particular one but I’d like to read more about the decision-making process.
What is the name of the school that he is closing?
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The DOE is closing PS 25 in Bed Stuy because it is underenrolled. It has 98 students. The DOE should sing its praises because it has excellent results with high needs kids. Small classes. But despite its great record, the PEP (controlled by the mayor) voted to close it. All the borough reps voted to keep it open. It would have a long line of kids hoping to get in if the DOE recognized it instead of closing it.
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Thanks, Diane. I looked it up. It sounds like a great school that deserves to stay open.
But that being said — I feel like politics is about being between a rock and a hard place and deciding who to disappoint. And if you look at PS 25 from the year before Mayor de Blasio took office in 2014, it was already a very tiny public school and seemed to be getting smaller every year. Was the DOE deliberately not placing students there who wanted it after de Blasio became Mayor? In the fall of 2016, they only had 17 Kindergarten kids and 13 first graders, with the older grades only averaging 19 kids/grade.
I don’t think PS 25 should have closed. But I guess if the DOE is absolutely forced to close a school because Albany has forced them to accommodate Success Academy and they have no choice, it makes some sense to close a school that doesn’t seem to have many kids per grade instead of trying to recruit new students and then finding another school to displace. It is absolutely not fair to the kids at PS 25 at all. But nothing is very fair when Albany gets to call the shots.
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The DOE was not forced by Albany to close PS 25. This was a De Blasio decision. If they wanted a larger enrollment, the Mayor could have paid them a visit to congratulate the staff on the wonderful job they were doing.
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Sorry, I wasn’t clear in my post. I knew it was de Blasio’s decision.
I just thought that it was possible to disagree with the decision while still recognizing that there was some justification for it. I know the school is great, but there seemed to be very few students in each grade and it sounded as if they had tried to recruit more in the past and just weren’t getting parents to come. So I can understand — even if I might make a different decision — that if you have to close a school, you might decide to close the one with the very smallest population.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Eva Moskowitz wants that space, too. But if de Blasio is going to be forced to give her space, I can see some argument for displacing a school with the smallest population of students instead of forcing another public school with more students to bear the burden. There don’t seem to be any good choices here.
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I’ve struggled with understanding CAP’s support for charter schools too. The conclusion I came to:
“Based on CAP’s progressive case for charter schools, it would be sensible to argue the progressive values that characterize much of CAP’s advocacy just don’t apply to the organization’s education work because of the influence of donors, the background of the staffers, or the close association CAP has to Washington Beltway elites, including members of former President Obama’s administration, who are devoted to charters.
“Another possibility is CAP’s case for charters is an attempt at a more nuanced look at the sector. Certainly, many of the well-intentioned people who operate charters and who labor in these schools deserve a nuanced consideration of their work, and CAP seems to believe critics of charters schools are ‘unreasonable’ and ‘simply devalue all charter schools.’
“If this truly is what motivates CAP to make the case for charters, then the organization simply hasn’t spent much time seriously considering what charter school skeptics say.”
More here: http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/center-for-american-progresss-failed-progressive-case-for-charter-schools/
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What’s to be puzzled about? As you said, CAP is a “safe haven” and “cheering squad” for all things Democrat. What you should be asking is why does the Democratic Party support charters? And once you fully understand the answer to that, you will understand why many of us no longer consider ourselves Democrats or beholden to the Democratic Party, even if they are (allegedly) the “lesser evil”.
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Democratic party officials believe they call fool all the Democrats and independents all the time. It’s certainly not ignorance. They just believe they are that much smarter than the rest of us.
It’s really rather funny, in a way.
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Just not funny ha-ha. Except to the Democrats themselves, who are laughing all the way to the bank.
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You think Elizabeth Warren supports charters because “she is laughing all the way to the bank”?
You think Bernie Sanders supports charters because “he is laughing all the way to the bank”?
You think Tom Perriello supports charters because “he is laughing all the way to the bank”?
What a cynical view. If Warren cared about money, she could get a lot more by taking other actions.
If Bernie Sanders cared about money, he could get a lot more by NOT endorsing the DFER candidates.
And there are plenty of Democrats who support public schools. There is no requirement to be pro-charter to be in the Democratic Party.
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Keep defending the Democrats, NYCPSP. They’ve got your back. They’ll come through for you yet.
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dienne77,
How’s that claim of Trump being no different than Hillary Clinton working out for you?
Keep working to defeat the evil Democrats like the Gov. of Virginia so that Bernie Sanders DFER candidate can turn the state over to the reformers. I find it pretty odd that you would celebrate the election of Bernie’s candidate who would undermine public schools and be so angry at the Democrat that wasn’t completely owned by the DFER candidate.
But then, I didn’t hear you say a word when Bernie Sanders sat next to Andrew Cuomo to praise his “progressive” free-college* (*strings attached). You sure did speak up about the evil Bill de Blasio, however.
With friends like you, how can people who support public education lose?
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Show me where I’ve made such claim or retract your statement.
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BTW, it’s actually working out pretty well to have Trump and not Clinton. Have you seen the number of protests lately? Inspiring. How many do you suppose we would have had had Clinton been elected?
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Do I really need to cite the many times in the fall of 2016 that you posted exactly the talking points of the right wing Russia trolls? Non stop posts about how there was no reason to vote for Hilllary because she was as bad as Trump.
FWIW — I continue to believe that Hillary would have been very good for public education and brought the Democrats back to their roots. Now I do not know that as a fact. But I saw her talk about charter schools and address the DFER reformers’ points at the NC town hall and I would love to find a Democrat who can speak nearly as well about the problem with charters. If the others — including Bernie and Warren — can’t even identify the problems clearly, then we have a long way to go.
And yes — I feel terrible that we had a chance to elect a politician who had the potential to do as much as LBJ did. I have no doubt that like LBJ she would be far from perfect. But we would have had a chance at some real progressive legislation. That’s what is so sad about you haters who bought into all the anti-Hillary propaganda. You wouldn’t even give her a chance, despite her pivoting left, despite her running on the most progressive platform that I have ever seen. And what’s sad is you wouldn’t give her a chance when she was running against one of the most problematic candidates we have ever had. Someone who is STILL a danger to us all.
And no, seeing “protests” is small comfort to me when Trump is in power. But one reason there are protests is because the leaders of them look for support using different language than you do.
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Good Lord, still with the Russian Trolls?
In case you haven’t noticed NYCpsp, you and Rachel Maddow are among the only people still flogging that dead horse…
Then again, maybe you’re correct that the “Buff Bernie” coloring page got LBGT voters to vote for and elect Trump.
Or maybe it was the 56% of their output that was distributed after the election that did it.
Yep, that Putin character really does have occult powers, using troll farms to determine the results of an election after it has occurred.
Which leads me to ask, who’s really the troll here?
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Michael,
It is not just Rachel Maddow. It is the CIA, British Intelligence, French Intelligence, German Intelligence, The NY Times, the Washington Post, etc. It is only Trump, you, Dienne and Glenn Greenwald who think that Putin did not attack our electoral system. Greenwald is funded to the tune of $250 million by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, who owns The Intercept and pays him $500,000 to maintain that Putin is a benign fellow. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know.
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Good to know that Bernie Sanders is a Democrat now that he supports charters.
Good to know that Bill de Blasio is not a democrat anymore. Oh yes – I forgot he is in the tank for charters now.
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Yes, they’ve got our backs, and a sharp knife (from the Ivy League!), aimed straight for it…
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Michael Fiorillo,
I consider the Democrats to be like the Teachers Union. There are some that have sold out and some that have not.
If you want to convince me to abandon any support for any teachers’ union and help elect the candidates that oppose the union, you are doing a great job. Since I can always point to something “non-progressive” that Randi Weingarten did, I am going to work very hard to convince every public school parent that the teachers union is a terrible corrupt entity that should be abolished now.
Do you have a problem with that? Because that’s what you and dienne77 are doing with the democratic party. I suspect you don’t like it when your own judgemental and sweeping attacks about the complete and total corruption of the entire teachers union come back to bite you, do you?
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Ah, NYCpsp, who never, ever misses an opportunity to argue fallaciously, and from ignorance, this time by putting words in my and Dienne’s mouth.
I’m a current union member and former chapter leader and delegate from my school, have served on union committees and have run for union office. I’ve forgotten more about unions, politics and public education than you will ever know, and I always, always draw a distinction between the importance of unions and mis-leaders who endanger their future. But that’s something you willfully ignore, as trolls do.
But feel free to go ahead and comfort yourself by genuflecting on Hillary the Great, and all she has accomplished… which would be what, exactly? The destruction of Libya and turning it into a failed state? Spending a billion dollars and losing to the most unpopular candidate ever? The overseeing of a Democratic Party that has lost all three branches of the federal government and two thirds of state governments in less than ten years?
Yes, from certain points of view, I suppose you could consider those to be very impressive accomplishments.
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Michael,
I am just pointing out your hypocrisy. You jump on every single misdeed of a leader of the Democratic party and use that to bash the entire party and say it is worthless and we should abandon it .
I agree with you that some Democrats in office are co-opted and need to be replaced. I don’t agree with you that the entire party is corrupt and needs to be replaced. I believe that we can VOTE IN the less corrupt Democrats to replace them, even if it will take time.
Isn’t that exactly what you say about the Teachers Union?
I will quote you: “I always, always draw a distinction between the importance of unions and mis-leaders who endanger their future.”
You don’t want people to think the union is such a corrupt and co-opted entity that we should simply abandon it and start bashing the entire teachers’ union every chance we get. Or at least, I assume you do not.
So why can’t you do the same with the Democrats? Or at least listen to why people get just as offended when you bash the entire Democratic Party as you feel offended when I say things like “the entire teachers’ unions corrupt and needs to go and it is evil and corrupt and nothing you can say will change my mind.”
Get it? You and dienne77 can continue to bash the entire Democratic Party all you want. But you sound just like the people who bash the teachers union and insist it is so corrupt we should abandon it. If you are fine with people bashing the teachers union in the very same manner that you bash the Democratic party, then I apologize. You are not the hypocrite that I thought you were.
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I also posted as a comment, links to these posts here at Diane’s blog: Who is Behind the Assault on Public Education? | Diane Ravitch’s blog
there is so much Fraud going on in the name of ‘CHOICE, as our tax money that should be used to support PUBLIC SCHOOLS, is being sent over to the pockets of profiteers, but also used TO SUPPORT religious schools.
“Ed Doerr of Americans for Religious Liberty wrote this overview of vouchers.The most enlightening information in this paper appears on page 11, where he lists the 29 State referenda where the issue was spending public money for religious schools. Every one of them was defeated. ”
“Voucher proponents like to say that the unions (those evil unions) outspent the voucher advocates, but note that vouchers were defeated even in non-union states. The claim is ridiculous on its face since billionaires like the DeVos family, the Waltons, and the Koch Brothers support vouchers. ”
“The paper should be updated to show how Vouchers have been adopted insidiously in states where the Constitution and the voters oppose them, like Florida.”
T”his explains why privatizers are terrified of referenda. They know they can’t win. The public opposes vouchers. The only way they get adopted is when wealthy donors buy legislators or pour millions into the campaigns of religious zealots. “
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“CAP is a puzzle to me. Throughout the Obama years, it was a safe haven and cheerleading squad for everything associated with the Obama administration, including the failed, odious, and ineffective Race to the Top.”
I agree. The voucher research is nice, but the “puzzle” for me is why these more-liberal lobbying groups are SUCH lousy advocates for public school students and families.
Their record AS ADVOCATES is terrible. They never take up any causes that are PRO public education.
This study is a perfect example. We have the voucher cheerleaders on one side and the anti-voucher ed reformers on the other side.Meanwhile, NINETY PER CENT of students and families have no advocates for the schools they actually attend. Once again, same as every day, the entire ed reform chorus is just …otherwise occupied.
It’s nuts. They’re irrelevant to public school students and families. They provide absolutely no value to us. And there are a lot of us!
How do you advocate “for public education” and ignore ninety per cent of schools? Why did we get stuck with such lousy, ineffective advocates?
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I’m going to guess that the major reason is, we don’t have any deep-pockets donors paralleling pro-charter & pro-voucher forces to support extensive research. Being as ‘we’ are the great majority of families/ communities with K12-aged kids, you’d think our taxes would be enough to support govt research – something like NIH, an agency of the Dept of Health & Human Services. I often think Ed would have been better served remaining as part of the Dept of Health Ed & Welfare (HHS name before the spin-off). Surely ed is a human service. Our isolation as Dept of Ed has made the education of our children a national political football.
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DC works like this, Diane. You have the voucher advocates on one side and the ed reformers who don’t support vouchers on the other.
Those two groups battle it out. Meanwhile the public schools that serve 90% of students are ignored unless they’re installing metal detectors or selling us ed tech crap.
For YEARS. Decades. Through 3 Presidents now. Our schools are the LAST priority. You can’t pay these people to pay attention to public schools! You ARE paying them and they still refuse to do it.
We should hire some politicians who support the schools 90% of children attend. It’s no more complicated than that. That’s what’s missing in DC. You never hear about our schools because these people have absolutely no interest in our schools.
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Chiara,
You are right.
In DC, it is vouchers and charters vs. charters only, not vouchers. No one seems to realize that charters are not better than public schools and a t as a parasite, drawing away funding and the students they want.
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I live in metro WashDC. At the federal level, there is not much “traction” in supporting one specific type of school. Politicians can mouth platitudes, about supporting education. That is a safe stance to take.
Most (not all) people believe that education should be a state/municipal matter, and that the feds should just get out. Has no one noticed, the decline in test scores, and how many (not all) American schools are falling behind other nations, since the feds got involved?
Maybe the best course of action, is to abolish the Dept of Ed, and have education turned back over to a more local level of control.
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Charles,
There has been no decline in test scores since the feds got involved. Read “Reign of Error.” The scores of black and Hispanic students have dramatically improved since the feds got involved, since desegregation, and since the launch of NAEP IN 1969.
Please don’t say silly things like that.
You waste my time responding to correct you.
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Diane already said it, Charles, but really, where do you get this ‘decline in test scores… falling behind other nations since the fed got involved?’
First of all, the fed has been involved in the nation’s ed since the 1860’s via variously-named depts & offices. The fed has had a major hand in the desegration of schools and civil rights of school students since the ’50’s both inside & outside the ed agency. The fed’s expanded role in ed dates from the 1965 ESEA act (re-authorized as NCLB then ESSA) promulgated under the Dept of HEW (estab 1953, 25 yrs before the spin-off of Dept of Ed).
Second, the only consistent test-score measure we have that tracks back before ’79 estab of Dept of Ed is NAEP (1st assessment ’69), which shows steady improvement for all subgroups [rapid for minority subgroups earlier on] right up until mid-2000’s when rate of increase slows, then starts to plateau in late 2000’s — coinciding w/implementation of annual NCLB testing then slashing of state publsch funding during (& in some states continuing since) the great recession. [As noted above NCLB is a re-auth of a pre-Dept of Ed act.]
As to falling behind other nations, US has scored middling among OECD pack on intl comparisons since they started in the ’60’s – & still does. The vicissitudes of economy, ed-agency type, school budgets, accountability testing notwithstanding.
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Look at the work of “liberal” ed reformers. It’s all a rear guard action. The BEST they can offer public school families is they will fight to not let the other factions in ed reform make our schools WORSE.
We can do better than that. We could hire people who actually value our kids and our schools and our communities and contribute something of value. We could have high expectations. That’s allowed.
Public school families don’t demand enough. They have been the DC punching bag for so long it’s like they don’t know the political clout they have. They have a LOT. There are 50 million of us. There are about 55 million Medicare enrollees. Compare/contrast. Ask yourself why such a huge group of people get no attention or respect from their elected representaives. It doesn’t have to be like this. We could fire this batch and get better advocates. That’s possible.
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And those people are candidates. Cynthia Nixon is one of them.
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If you look at the DC budget you’ll see they reluctantly funded programs that have existed for years. Decades. Programs that were established by representaves that came before any of these people. THOSE representatives valued public schools.
The absolute BEST work ed reform advocates can do is limit cuts. That’s not the work of advocates. Advocates IMPROVE.
That’s all they are offering us and they expect to not only be re-elected but to be first begged NOT to harm our schools and then THANKED when they grudgingly produce the absolute minimum they can get away with.
Imagine if we had people who passionately supported our schools the way ed reformers passionately support charters and vouchers? What if we had a PUBLIC school DeVos or Duncan? We could insist on hiring people like that. We could raise the bar.
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The article shows that public schools spend more time on task teaching important academics like reading and math. “On average, private schools offer 65.5 minutes less per week in reading instruction and 48.3 minutes less per week in math instruction.” How can anyone that feels student achievement is important back so called choice.? Public schools offer the public the most efficient and effective ways to produce competent citizens. Public schools represent the will of the community with democratic input, transparency and accountability. “Reform” is the brain child of the wealthy and politicians that do their bidding. Reform has taken millions of young people on a bird walk to nowhere. We need to stop these reckless, wasteful policies.
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“Public schools offer the public the most efficient and effective ways to produce competent citizens. Public schools represent the will of the community, with democratic input, transparency and accountability”
As Hamlet (and the oligarchs) would say, “Ay, there’s the rub”
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Indeed, “the will of the community… democratic input, transparency and accountability” are the absolutely last things our Overclass masters want to permit, let alone encourage. It’s a major reason why just about all of them, virtually without exception, want to destroy the public education system, in the name of so-called reform.
They’ve been convinced for decades that the US suffers from an “excess of democracy” (that’s from good ol’ Harvard warmonger/”conflict of civilizations” promoter Samuel “Mad Dog”Huntington).
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America suffers from an excess of
democracyIvy League grads (and droputs)Fixed
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In economic terms, an investment in quality public education is an investment in one’s own community. It boosts property values. Investing in charters and vouchers is a disinvestment in the local community. The beneficiaries of privatization are corporations, and the local community suffers a loss of value by defunding local schools. People need to understand the economic impact of privatization.
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People need to understand who will profit from privatization.
And particularly, that it won’t be them or any other members of the 99%.
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Most taxpayers need local funding and control of their schools to grasp this. You pay for it, you see the results, you personally give input and discuss changes at local board meetings. I think this might work even where a large part of funding comes from state &/or fed aid, as long as how to spend the money remains in local hands. But that gets murky as soon as ‘local’ means large numbers of people & many districts. As control becomes centralized– bigger pots of $ being controlled by proportionally smaller groups of people– we lose the plot.
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Add to the 60 days of learning lost from voucher schools the fact that research shows that there is also learning lost during the summer break, and it becomes much worse than 60
days out of the average 180 school days in one school year.
Oxford Learning reports that over the summer, 2.6 months of math skills are lost and 2 months of reading skills.
https://www.oxfordlearning.com/summer-learning-loss-statistics/
Once summer is factored in, the voucher child has lost more than 120 days of the average school year or 2/3rds.
Why bother to even have a child enroll in a voucher school?
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Considering the preposterously stupid appeals for support from Dem front groups that claim DeVos is ruining Obamas education legacy, I say that the CAP is triangulating and waiting for the wind to shift. I trust them not at all. They’re a bunch of corporate suits wearing progressive camoflage. Even the devil can cite scripture to advance his cause. It’s no different than green washing, it’s all marketing.
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The letter from Betsy to Barack:
Dear Barack
I love what you’ve done to the place!
Hopelessly DeVosed to you.
Betsy
Reply from Barack to Betsy:
Dear Bets
My legacy would not have been complete without you.
I never could trust Arne to finish the game.
Thanks for being my LeBron.
Yours in Reform always.
Barack
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