Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Adequacy and Equity and a vocal supporter of public schools, writes here about an investigation of vouchers by the Cincinnati Enquirer. The report echoed the findings of academic research: students in public schools get higher test scores than those in voucher schools. Vouchers don’t “save” children. They don’t “save” black children. Ohio officials shifted hundreds of millions of dollars away from public schools to support vouchers. Even with the loss of funding, the public schools were superior to the voucher schools. Why don’t Republican politicians in Ohio care about effectiveness and prudence? Why do they continue to fund failure?
Phillis writes:
Cincinnati Enquirer investigation confirms that vouchers do not enhance academic success
The voucher campaigners will have to change their pitch to entice students to their private school classrooms. Confirming what other studies have revealed, the Enquirer research indicates there is a definite public school advantage. “Yet five of the largest districts—Cincinnati, Toledo, Cleveland, Akron and Canton—fared better academically than their local private school rivals, by margins ranging from slight to decisive, according to the Enquirer analysis”, the report states.
The Enquirer research indicates that the voucher system has been least successful in educating black students.
An excerpt from the report regarding city districts other than the urban shows a definite public school advantage that is widespread:
Other areas
Forty cities were included in this category, and a public school district in all but two of the cities outperformed its surrounding private schools.
Zanesville scored about six points higher on state tests than area private schools but had about $675,000 deducted for EdChoice.
Coshocton City Schools saw $115,000 deducted. The district had a 61% proficiency rate, more than 20 points higher than local private schools.
Portsmouth City Schools earned a proficiency rate of 51.9%, 10 points higher than the private schools in its community. Yet Portsmouth City had about $725,000 deducted since 2018.
Sandusky City Schools outperformed its neighboring private schools by 17 percentage points, achieving a proficiency rate of 49%. The district saw $660,000 deducted since 2018.
Van Wert City Schools and Wilmington City Schools were the only two districts in this category that fared worse on state testing than private schools.
In all, public school districts in this category had $3.75 million deducted for EdChoice in the past three years.
A longstanding perception in the past is that there is a private school advantage. Recent research has debunked that perception. The demographic of private schools is typically different from the public system. When the demographics of public schools and private schools are considered, there is a definite public school advantage.
The Cincinnati Enquirer is behind a paywall. The results are posted in the Akron Beacon Journal, not behind a paywall.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Understanding the behavior of elected officials supporting underperforming privatized public services is simple: how much do public schools contribute to them? It’s all about the Benjamin’s.
“Cincinnati Enquirer investigation confirms that vouchers do not enhance academic success”
But ed reformers moved the goalposts for private schools. Now “academic success” doesn’t matter. What matters is “choice”.
It’s completely incoherent but they don’t care- they oversee public schools like a roving police force based on public funding, but do no oversight at all of the publicly funded private schools they promote.
It’s not that difficult to understand, really. It’s an ideological preference for private schools. The question for me is why public schools put up with what is a clear double standard.
They were always going to end at universal vouchers. The thing is wholly incoherent without it. They’ve done a 20 year shift to lockstep support of universal vouchers because this couldn’t end any other way. Just consider your kids public school as being “wound down” as they “transition” to privatization. That’s why they don’t fund it. They’re phasing our kids, and schools, out.
Ed reformers will encounter a lot of contradictions between how they sold this “movement” to the public and how it plays out in real life.
They can’t even competently regulate charter schools. They’ll never be able to regulate a wholly fragmented and privatized system.
Their systems will be “dark” as far as information which is of course exactly the opposite of what they sold the public. It’s already happening in Florida. They don’t have any idea what’s going on in the publicly funded private schools there. All of these elaborate mandates they imposed on public schools at great expense over the last 20 years? None of that applies to private schools.
All those “exposes” you see on ed reform sites? They only have that information because labor unions collect and report it. You never see “teacher discipline” data on charter schools or private schools because no one collects and reports it. The systems they set up have less information, not more.
Once more so-called choice has assumed value which is false. We also know that the schools, not the parents, really get to make the choice in choice schemes Bad choices like vouchers are worthless choices.
Public schools are a public service. We don’t get to select what police force or fire department will serve us, why should we accept the denigration of public education in a zero sum game? Any funding that goes to private companies gets subtracted from public school budgets. Why would any sane person believe that we should defund public schools so that worse voucher schools can do a worse job educating students? Choice is not about better options for students. It is about diminishing public schools and unions. It is about using public money to pay for religious schools of questionable academic standing.
well said: we know that the schools, not the parents, really get to make the choice
Here’s what ed reformers have been working on the last 6 months:
“Rep. Daniel Lipinski
That’s why I’m proud to join RepByrne & RepMarkWalker in introducing The School Choice Now Act which provides emergency funding to state-certified Scholarship Granting Organizations which already exist in many states, incl Illinois.”
You probably thought there would be some kind of useful pandemic response that applies to the 90% of students and families who attend the unfashionable “public school sector”
Well, you would be wrong. Not that it matters. Public schools carried on anyway. They have to! They serve 90% of students and families.
Wholly irrelevant to us, our schools, and our students.
State Catholic Conferences, the political arm of the bishops, encourage followers to contact their elected representatives and ask them to vote for the Alexander-Scott legislation, School Choice Now Act.
It will nag ever pass the House so fuhgeddaboutit
Politics- I thought Roe v. Wade was settled. The day before Trump was elected, I thought Hillary would win. I never thought that the USPS would be targeted for elimination. I never thought a President would dismantle the nation’s security infrastructure and promote division.
But, I hope you’re right.
“Here’s the special exemption for their preferred (private) schools that ed reformers lobbied for and got:
“The upshot of all this is that, once the budget goes into effect, voucher students in Ohio will no longer be required to take the same state exams that the vast majority of their taxpayer-funded peers do.”
Got that? The same ed reform lobbyists who insisted that every public school student had to take state tests and be judged by the results of the tests exempted private school students.
They’re happy to stick your kid with their cheap, gimmicky tests, but all private schools have to do is lobby enough lawmakers and exemptions made in “closed door meetings” miraculously appear and 20 years of ed reformers scolding public schools on “accountability” goes right out the window.
Why are public school students and families stuck with policy written by people who don’t support our students and schools? It’s such junk they won’t even put it in their own schools. Is it too much to ask that public school students not be subjected to policy written by people who don’t and didn’t attend public schools, don’t support public schools and don’t send their children to them? Why are lobbyists for charters and vouchers directing what happens in our schools?
Answer- Billionaires fund the slime who perform for Fordham Institute.
Presumably, some assuage their consciences (for rejecting democracy) in tribalism’s arms. They conveniently believe Catholic schools are better for kids.
When villagers are in the cross hairs of enemy snipers, the feelings of the enemy’s K-P corps shouldn’t be a priority. But, walking on eggshells is required because the powerless among the religious are very sensitive and quick to attack anyone who makes the religious connection to school choice politics.
It’s no surprise that school choice is politically backed by the Ohio Catholic Conference. It’s no surprise that Redfern, former Democratic state chair and then,
state representative, said that when bishops call the politicians listen.
It’s no surprise that Sen. Matt Huffman and his first cousin, the other state senator (he’s the one in the news for his racist comment at a legislative hearing) promote school choice.
My letter to the Cincinnati Enquirer regarding this was published today. Finally the truth is rising to the surface on the Ed Choice propaganda machine