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The Spectacle Blog
Last week AEI education scholar Frederick Hess mentioned a study that found that Milwaukee’s school voucher system — the first of its kind in a major U.S. city — has shown disappointing results: students in the voucher program are performing no better than public school students on tests, according to this study. Hess took those findings to suggest that at the least the voucher system in Milwaukee has not been the panacea that school-choice proponents have promised. Matt Yglesias took it one step further and called the program a “failure.”
On the Cato-at-Liberty blog, Andrew Coulson has provided some important context that might help determine whether or not the Milwaukee program, and by extension the push for vouchers in general, has proved a failure.
The Milwaukee study is part of a vast literature. Over the past quarter century at least sixty-five studies have compared outcomes in public and private schools around the world, reporting 156 separate statistical findings.
The evidence of this literature is starkly one-sided. The vast preponderance of findings show private schools outperforming public schools after all the normal controls. What’s more, when we focus on the research comparing truly market-like systems to state-run school monopolies, the market advantage is found to be even more dramatic…
Even the recent Milwaukee result described by Yglesias as a failure shows voucher students in private schools performing as well as public school students who receive roughly 50% more government funding. How is a program that produces similar academic results to the status quo at a much lower cost to taxpayers a failure? And what of the research suggesting thatstudents in the Milwaukee voucher program graduate at higher rates than those in public schools?
I think that Coulson has accidentally understated the argument that the vouchers are a lot cheaper because of what looks like a simple arithmetic error: Milwaukee spends $6,442 per voucher student and $14,011 per public school student. That means that they spend more than 100 percent more per public school student, not 50. (The government doesn’t pay all of the voucher students’ tuitions. The average cost per voucher student is $7,703, meaning that the schools must come up with over $1000 of private funding per student.)
The larger point that Hess and Yglesias are getting at is that these voucher students are still not getting a decent education, which truly is a failure. But given the available evidence that school choice works in general and the fact that the system is saving significant amounts (a very salient fact when you consider the condition of state and city finances), it’s probably wise not to overemphasize this one disappointing finding.
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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/04/15/the-failure-of-school-vouchers
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Thomas| 4.15.10 @ 12:19PM
Once again, we seem to be embracing the notion that the school is solely responsible for the performance of the student. Nothing could be farther from reality.
Schools do bear a certain responsibility for imparting facts, knowledge and, in some cases, wisdom. But, the student has to have both the ability and the desire to embrace that knowledge and use it. The ability is dependent upon a number of things including physical and mental abilities. The desire is largely dependent upon societal, cultural and familial standards of success.
In the case of locations that use vouchers, it should not come as surprise that student performance scores are similar between public and private schools. In the past, private schools had a higher percentage of students who desired to perform to higher standards, because they came from families that stressed such performance and actively educated their children in this desire to perform academically. Vouchers allow students, who do not have the same high performance values, to enroll in private schools. These students enter private schools with the same disadvantages as their public school counterparts. Hence the similar educational results.
Education is not broken, society is.
daniel bowers| 4.15.10 @ 12:36PM
Joseph Lawler is disengenious when comparing 'voucher schools', and 'private schools' with 'public schools. Both 'voucher schools' and 'public schools', are the same animal with some differences: for public schools the funding of Special Education students, Advanced Placement students, and IB students is completely in their baliwak-the 'voucher schools' (still very much a public schools) have no such requirement. Public schools must take every student, discipline problems aside, must ake every student that walks through the entrance door. Voucher schools and Private schools do not. To compare public and voucher schools is bad enouigh; to compare these two with private schools which have none to very littel oversight, is an egregious error.
Pingback| 4.15.10 @ 6:22PM
More on Milwaukee Vouchers « Finance Blog links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 4.16.10 @ 3:47PM
More on Milwaukee Vouchers | Think Tank West links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 4.21.10 @ 2:38PM
A Town More Famous For Hops Than Vouchers « Around The Sphere links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Emma Jackson | 4.30.10 @ 1:02AM
Joseph Lawler hits the head on the nail with this post. Why say that this one study proves that school choice through vouchers is a failure? Milton Friedman touted the idea of vouchers as a vehicle to privatize education.
We know that private schools generally do a better job than the government education monopoly because they have an incentive to meet the academic needs of the students. If private schools don't serve the academic needs of the students, they will go out of business. The Milwaukee voucher program (even through it's not a universal voucher program) has introduced more competition into education. In Milwaukee many schools (even public schools) simply go out of business if they are not serving the academic needs of the students. Parents don't want to send their kids to subpar schools. Hence, schools have an incentive to provide a quality education to attract the parents' vouchers.
Also, who is a better determiner of what is best for a child's education? The government or a parent? Even if the voucher students, lets say are performing academically the same as their public school peers in Milwaukee, at least it's the parents choosing the education rather than the government assigning a school.
Lawler points out that many states have massive budget deficits. Right now, Illinois has a $13 billion dollar deficit. A school voucher program initiative for Illinois cleared a House panel, inching closer to becoming passed. If passed it could lead to significant costs saving for the state. It could also offer a better opportunity for students attending the worst performing Chicago Public Schools.