Matt Barnum reports that new research from Louisiana shows that the negative effects of vouchers persist over time.
There used to be a belief that the negative effects were temporary, but apparently the voucher students do not bounce back, as voucher proponents hoped.
New research on a closely watched school voucher program finds that it hurts students’ math test scores — and that those scores don’t bounce back, even years later.
That’s the grim conclusion of the latest study, released Tuesday, looking at Louisiana students who used a voucher to attend a private school. It echoes research out of Indiana, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. showing that vouchers reduce students’ math test scores and keep them down for two years or more.
Together, they rebut some initial research suggesting that the declines in test scores would be short-lived, diminishing a common talking point for voucher proponents.
“While the early research was somewhat mixed … it is striking how consistent these recent results are,” said Joe Waddington, a University of Kentucky professor who has studied Indiana’s voucher program. “We’ve started to see persistent negative effects of receiving a voucher on student math achievement.”
The state’s voucher program also didn’t improve students’ chances of enrolling in college.
The results may influence local and national debates. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is working to drum up support for a proposed federal tax credit program that could help parents pay private-school tuition, and Tennessee lawmakers are debating whether to create a voucher-like program of their own.
If past history is a guide, Betsy DeVos will dismiss the research, as will Tennessee Governor Bill Lee. They want vouchers regardless of their impact on students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are many reasons to hate vouchers. They segregate schools. They violate the constitution by providing public support for religion. They dodge accountability. They encourage fraud.
But I am very wary of using test scores to “prove” that they are ineffective. There are many other ways to judge their inefficacy – like just looking at them.
But if we use test scores to prove ineptitude, we tacitly support using test scores to prove effectiveness. And that, folks, is one of the major problems with education.
Beat me to the punch Steve!
Until the standards and testing malpractice regime is totally rejected for all the harms to the students’ being, well, the same nonsense will continue to obtain and harm students.
But, but we have to be able to. . . (add whatever horse manure caveat that is quickly given to defend those malpractices.
NO!
When the students are being harmed, when their very being is denigrated into false, invalid test scores, the only ETHICAL thing to do is to quit doing the malpractice. Anything less is wrong and demonstrates how GAGA Good German attitude in implementing malpractices is invalid, unjust, unethical and immoral.
YES.
From what I have seen of voucher schools, I seriously doubt most unaccredited voucher schools even have anyone on staff that can teacher advanced level math courses. Many voucher schools are taught by well meaning, Christian teachers that do not have the background necessary to teach advanced math. Many colleges will not accept their graduation credits which put these students at a distinct disadvantage. These same advanced students would get a much more challenging program in most public schools.
More often than not the most descriptive phrasing would be:
…are taught by well meaning, Christian “teachers” that…
maybe even change the words “well meaning” to “proselytizing”
It doesn’t matter. The whole echo chamber switched en masse from “great schools!” to “choice” being the justification for vouchers.
Now “choice” is the reason. And “choice” has no standards at all.
My favorite is when these state legislatures spend 6 months working on vouchers and then throw in the entire public school population as an afterthought – “we will also grudgingly allow public schools to exist!” Wow. Thanks! That’s some real effort and commitment there. Real enthusiasm for our students.
We’re the boilerplate sentence at the end of the real work, which is focused exclusively on the schools (and students) they prefer.
See, they don’t actually SUPPORT public school students. Instead they support private school students because public school students will naturally and inexorably “respond” by getting “better”, just by proximity to the vastly superior private schools. We have a very attenuated road to travel before we see any benefit, but stay the course! Sometime in the coming decades some public school student somewhere will gain some small benefit from ed reform. In theory.
Ed reformers lead very sheltered lives if they actually believed every private school was superior to every public school. And they did believe it. Because all they did was hand people a voucher and the free market magic was supposed to occur. All the studies came AFTER they have jammed this belief of theirs into state after state.
The studies won’t “inform” the policy. The policy is and was ideological. We know that since they invested hundreds of millions of dollars without basing it on anything at all, other than their opposition to “government schools”.
DeVos is right now spending each and every workday pushing a massive national voucher program, to the exclusion of lifting a finger on behalf of any of the tens of millions in the unfashionable public schools. She doesn’t care about “studies”. It’s a belief.
Vouchers are BAD.
“I love the poorly educated.” Donald Trump
“The Effect of the Louisiana Scholarship Program on College Entrance” is not specifically about test scores. The research is probably disconcerting to the charter/choice/voucher industry because it comes from the Walton-funded Depatment of Educational Reform at the University of Arkansas.