# new study on vouchers? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 8, 2001, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343 "2001-09-08T03:42:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2001, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/1 "2001-09-08T03:42:25Z")
Okay, so I accidentally found myself watching the 700 Club, and they mentioned results of a new study out on vouchers. It referred to a study conducted on the schools in one of the states (Wyoming? Wisconsin?) that recently had a voucher program law overturned by federal courts. The reported results were that there was a marginal but clear support for better performance from students who participated in the voucher program. They mentioned a USA Today mention of it. Anybody heard about this study? Anybody looked at it to see what it says? ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2001, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/2 "2001-09-08T04:27:48Z")
Do any of these sound right? [http://www.aft.org/research/vouchers/](http://www.aft.org/research/vouchers/) [http://www.aft.org/research/Vouchers/mil/finance.htm](http://www.aft.org/research/Vouchers/mil/finance.htm) > **[EPN](https://epn.org/)** > > The Emergency, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (EPN) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2001, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/3 "2001-09-08T04:30:28Z")
You sure you weren’t watching a rerun from some time back, **Irishman**? I have no idea where the “700 Club” gets its information on school voucher programs, but I have not seen any major new studies out very recently on the Milwaukee system (I presume that the state you’re vaguely remembering is Wisconsin, because only Milwaukee and Cleveland currently have public voucher programs). Here’s a [Christian Science Monitor](http://www.csmonitor.com/sections/learning/revnschools/p-3story0330.html) article on the subject. As for the voucher program being overturned in the courts: huh??? Last November, the Supreme Court refused to hear a suit challenging the constitutionality of the Milwaukee program’s giving taxpayer funds for education to religious schools, so I can’t imagine why the “700 Club” would be upset about that. If nobody else has any better luck in figuring out exactly what it is we’re supposed to be talking about here, I move we drop the debate for lack of supporting facts. (Note added in preview: thanks **DDG** , but I couldn’t identify a clear connection between any of those and the supposedly recent events that the show was supposedly referring to. **Irishman** , this’ll teach you to watch the “700 Club”, eh?) ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2001, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/4 "2001-09-08T04:32:27Z")
Pfui. :rolleyes: Out of the horse’s mouth. It’s late, I’m tired. [http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546|CHID101024|CIID768132,00.html](http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546%7CCHID101024%7CCIID768132,00.html) [http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546|CHID101024|CIID143468,00.html](http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546%7CCHID101024%7CCIID143468,00.html) Is that what you heard? I’ll leave it up to you how to make those links. 'Night. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2001, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/5 "2001-09-08T20:31:56Z")
From Wall St. Journal’s “Opinion Journal” 6/6/01 > [@](#): > > ‘Failed Experiment’ > A study of Cleveland’s school-voucher program finds that students attending private schools had “statistically significantly higher academic achievement” than their counterparts in public schools. The Ohio Federation of Teachers responds: “It’s time to pull the plug on this failed experiment.” Oddly, the union isn’t talking about the public schools. [http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001074](http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001074) The link to the Ohio Fed of Teacher’s quote is USA Today [http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010905/3602672s.htm](http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010905/3602672s.htm) Note that _Opinion Journal_ emphasizes the statistical significance, but not the small magnitude of the improvement. USA Today says > [@](#): > > …children who began the program as kindergartners showed slight but ‘‘statistically significantly higher academic achievement’’ between the 1998-2000 period. ---
**Author:** ![Nanook\_of\_the\_North\_Shore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc8723/32.png) [@Nanook\_of\_the\_North\_Shore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanook_of_the_North_Shore)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2001, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/6 "2001-09-08T21:24:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose \* > \*\* > > I’ll leave it up to you how to make those links. 'Night. 🙂 \*\* [http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546|CHID101024|CIID768132,00.html](http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546%7CCHID101024%7CCIID768132,00.html) [http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546|CHID101024|CIID143468,00.html](http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546%7CCHID101024%7CCIID143468,00.html) Glad to be of service DDG 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2001, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/7 "2001-09-09T17:50:07Z")
december, that’s the USA Today article that the 700 Club was referring to. No supporting information there explaining it. Kimstu, most certainly could have been a rerun. I normally avoid that show, but had just finished watching _Exploring the Unknown_, and was flipping through my channel guide to see what was on worth watching, so it was running in the background. Ducky and Nanook, thanks for the links. It’s a start. Reading the articles I see the following: [School Vouchers Make the Grade](http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546%7CCHID101024%7CCIID768132,00.html) > [@](#): > > “When I was at the public classrooms, they had big classrooms and a lot of kids and the teachers couldn’t get to a lot of people. Now that we have smaller classrooms and less kids, the teachers can help more people, and I get more attention,” Bianca said. > [@](#): > > Choice advocates say public school spending has risen since the voucher program began. The departure of 10,000 students has eased crowded classrooms. Interesting. So learning improves when there are smaller classrooms. What a revelation. :rolleyes: This caught my attention: [Harvard Researcher Says Vouchers Are Working](http://www.christianity.com/CC/article/0,,PTID2546%7CCHID101024%7CCIID777380,00.html) > [@](#): > > Hoxby: I think there are three things that you need to know about that sort of argument. First, this voucher program isn’t actually taking per pupil spending from the Milwaukee Public Schools. Every time a student leaves, the student takes about $2,500 with him to the voucher school. But the Milwaukee Public Schools spend about $8,800 a year on a per pupil basis. So most of that money is left behind and the remaining students get to share in the money that’s left behind. So actually per pupil spending has gone up slightly because of the voucher plan in Milwaukee. So resources are not being drained on a per pupil basis from the Milwaukee Public Schools. That’s common for voucher programs and charter school programs all over the United States. Okay, that’s a mildly compelling argument that vouchers aren’t bankrupting the public schools. Here’s the link to a string of papers by this Hoxby lady on the subject. Crap, a lot there to read through. [http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers.html](http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers.html) Now this story bothers me. [http://www.csmonitor.com/sections/learning/revnschools/p-3story0330.html](http://www.csmonitor.com/sections/learning/revnschools/p-3story0330.html) > [@](#): > > Walter Sava, director of the Bruce-Guadalupe School in Milwaukee, has no doubt that vouchers have forced public schools to think differently. The private, pre-K-through-eighth-grade school was on the verge of closing in 1990. It had only 150 students, and its $650 tuition couldn’t cover bills but was still too high for most inner-city families. So we should support vouchers to make _private_ schools financially viable? > [@](#): > > Result? Rather than continue to lose the voucher money to the popular school - and even more funds if Bruce-Guadalupe became a charter - the Milwaukee Public School system enlisted the school to act as a contractor > for MPS. It gave the school a large percentage of the state’s per-pupil funding allowance and continued to respect its autonomy. Hmm, don’t know anything about this school, but “respect its autonomy” raises my eyebrows. > [@](#): > > Yet vouchers can promote inclusiveness by giving opportunity to disenfranchised groups like low-income urban parents, argues Caroline Hoxby, associate professor of economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. “They’re consumers now,” she says. “Before they couldn’t be bothered to learn about the system. Now they’re much more active.” “Bothered to learn about the system”? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2001, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/8 "2001-09-09T20:51:22Z")
There have been dozens of local stories on the Cleveland voucher system. I’d be interested in the actual report from the Indiana study–and what they considered “statistically significant” (and who paid for the study). The reports I saw (from both pro and anti voucher groups) indicated that the kids were not doing better overall, and had fallen in some areas. The pro people were claiming “not enough time to evaluate” when the numbers came out. ---
**Author:** ![emarkp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3be4f8/32.png) [@emarkp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emarkp)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/9 "2001-09-10T02:13:23Z")
[QUOTE] \*Originally posted by Irishman \* So we should support vouchers to make _private_ schools financially viable? [QUOTE] More to the point, we break the back of the government-imposed monopoly and allow competition. Since families are being taxed to death in the USA, we can allow familes to use some of the tax dollars going to one school and apply them to another. That way, real choice is available to more than just the wealthy. ---
**Author:** ![emarkp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3be4f8/32.png) [@emarkp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emarkp)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/10 "2001-09-10T02:14:30Z")
(oops) > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Irishman \* > So we should support vouchers to make _private_ schools financially viable? More to the point, we break the back of the government-imposed monopoly and allow competition. Since families are being taxed to death in the USA, we can allow familes to use some of the tax dollars going to one school and apply them to another. That way, real choice is available to more than just the wealthy. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/11 "2001-09-10T18:24:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by emarkp \* > Since families are being taxed to death in the USA, we can allow familes to use some of the tax dollars going to one school and apply them to another. That way, real choice is available to more than just the wealthy. Uh, yeah. And what happens when the schools raise their prices? “Whoops, all the kids from the poor and disadvantaged families get to go to the same crummy schools again, because their vouchers alone aren’t enough for them to afford the higher tuitions! Too bad for them!” And it’s hardly a surprise to me that private-school advocates loev to trump the academic success of their students. After all, _they_ are able to refuse admission to the slow-learning students, the troublemakers, and anyone else who may negatively impact the school’s academic scores – unlike the public schools, who are **required** to accept everyone. Oddly enough, I haven’t heard of a school-voucher advocate who suggests comparing public and private schools on an _equal_ basis… ---
**Author:** ![g8rguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7cd45c/32.png) [@g8rguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/g8rguy)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/12 "2001-09-10T22:46:12Z")
Tell me something, **rjung**. If Hoxby’s data as presented by **Irishman** is correct, what harm do vouchers do to the public schools? That is, if (obviously) class sizes decrease while spending per student increases, what exactly are the drawbacks? I suppose I’m hopelessly naive to miss them, but I’m curious. Secondly, I fail to see why your compaint about private schools being selective is remotely relevant. Of course they are; that’s the reason they have better results in the first place (i.e. by being selective, they can get quicker learners and therefore, one would suppose, a better learning environment)! Now obviously, a massive influx of students to private schools would have a negative effect on them, but **if** vouchers have minimal effects on public schools while allowing a few more kids to go to a private school where they’ll get (arguably) a superior education, why the opposition? To be honest, my biggest problem with vouchers is that if many people were to use them, I’d naively expect that private schools would see a degradation in performance because they’d start to run into the same issues that public schools run into. In other words, moving students around _en masse_ makes no sense as an answer, but moving just a few might be worthwhile. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/13 "2001-09-10T23:31:50Z")
**gg:** _To be honest, my biggest problem with vouchers is that if many people were to use them, I’d naively expect that private schools would see a degradation in performance because they’d start to run into the same issues that public schools run into. In other words, moving students around en masse makes no sense as an answer, but moving just a few might be worthwhile._ Apparently that sort of effect is in fact being seen among Milwaukee’s voucher schools. As [this LA Times article](http://www.geocities.com/pepperdinedemocrats/Voucherarticle.html) notes, > [@](#): > > Vouchers have made it possible for a share of Milwaukee’s children to attend private schools their parents could not otherwise afford. But they have not succeeded in sprinkling poor students evenly among their wealthier private school peers, so voucher students tend to be concentrated. Half attend just one-fifth of participating private schools, according to the Public Policy Forum, a Milwaukee research group. In at least 20 private schools, 90% or more of students receive vouchers. > > The result is that some private and public school educators in Milwaukee’s urban core have begun to sound awfully similar. Private school principals here fret about discipline problems and teacher shortages. Public school principals refer to parents as “customers” and talk about consumer surveys. Both voice frustration at their schools’ being constantly compared to suburban schools. Both say urban schools are too often judged by people who have never been in them. […] > > Perhaps the most dramatic changes have taken place within private schools, particularly those with large numbers of voucher students. Some report being forced to hire more administrators, social workers and special education teachers and to raise salaries. Private school educators talk of days filled with a new array of small tasks: tracking down parents whose phones are disconnected, filling out more child abuse reports, tutoring children who are behind. In other words, school competition has its good points, but it doesn’t seem to be a “magic bullet” for the problems of educating poor inner-city children. Education for people on the margins of society is an intrinsically difficult and expensive service to provide, and simply throwing the field open to more market choices isn’t really going to change that. ---
**Author:** ![g8rguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7cd45c/32.png) [@g8rguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/g8rguy)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/14 "2001-09-11T00:55:51Z")
Hmm… score one for naivety. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised, though. It’s quite the thorny issue, eh? ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/15 "2001-09-11T19:11:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by g8rguy \* > Now obviously, a massive influx of students to private schools would have a negative effect on them, but **if** vouchers have minimal effects on public schools while allowing a few more kids to go to a private school where they’ll get (arguably) a superior education, why the opposition? Since **Kimstu** has already addressed the issue of student distribution by social class (and, IIRC, we probably read the same article in the _Times_), I’ll just comment here by saying that almost all of the voucher initiatives I’ve seen **do** threaten public education – either by reducing funding for public education to pay for the vouchers, or by proposing to eliminate public schools all together (often by turning public schools into voucher schools). Either way, the proposed vouchers are funded by _sacrificing_ the public school system, which leads to the problems I’m worried about, hence my opposition. If there’s a voucher initiative that does what you say – e.g., having **minimal** effects on public schools while helping students opt to go private if they want to – I haven’t heard of it yet. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/16 "2001-09-11T19:46:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rjung \* > \*\*Either way, the proposed vouchers are funded by _sacrificing_ the public school system, which leads to the problems I’m worried about, hence my opposition. If there’s a voucher initiative that does what you say – e.g., having **minimal** effects on public schools while helping students opt to go private if they want to – I haven’t heard of it yet. \*\* Proponents claim that vouchers will actually improve public schools. One reason already mentioned here is that they increase the available public education money _per student._ A more important reason is that competition with private schools is supposed to induce public schools to improve. Time will tell whether or not these claims prove to be correct. Meanwhile, I find it impossible to oppose the Jeb Bush voucher plan in Florida. That plan provides vouchers to students at failing public schools, after those schools have had 3 years to fix themselves and failed to do so. It seems unconscionable to keep kids trapped in a school like that. Furthermore, the threat of vouchers should induce educational improvement in schools that need it most. During the 3-year warning period, the failing public schools will be under tremendous pressure to fix their problems, to avoid losing students. I’d expect most of them to reach a state of adequacy within the 3-year window, so that the vouchers would seldom come into play. ---
**Author:** ![g8rguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7cd45c/32.png) [@g8rguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/g8rguy)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-study-on-vouchers/80343/17 "2001-09-11T20:58:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rjung \* > Either way, the proposed vouchers are funded by _sacrificing_ the public school system, which leads to the problems I’m worried about, hence my opposition. If there’s a voucher initiative that does what you say – e.g., having **minimal** effects on public schools while helping students opt to go private if they want to – I haven’t heard of it yet. \*\* How is taking students from a given school (hence reducing class sizes) while increasing the amount of money available on a per student basis “sacrificing the public school system” as a whole? The most tenable argument I can see off the top of my head is that the students who choose to leave may be among the best and brightest, and thus their absence might be felt in worsening the learning environment for those kids who stay in the public school system. (This seems to me to be, basically, an argument that says we should force the best students to sacrifice their well-being to help the other students, and I hence find it morally reprehensible, but YMMV. It also disregards the counter-argument that with more funds/student and fewer students/teacher, things may even be expected to improve. The two effects no doubt would compete, and I see no reason to assume that the one would dominate over the other.) There are, no doubt, a whole host of other conceivable philosophical objections, but you know what? I don’t care about philosophical objections unless they’re born out by real world observations. That being said, do you have any statistics whatsoever to demonstrate that after a suitable time has elapsed[sup]\*\*[/sup], the performance of those students who stayed at a public school when a voucher system was enacted demonstrated worsening performance? That is, do statistics bear out the idea that the average student is worse off when vouchers are an option than otherwise, or is your assertion that you haven’t head of a voucher system that doesn’t sacrifice the public school systems as much a matter of ideology as is the counter-assertion that vouchers are the cure to our education problems? Vouchers are not a magic bullet solution; I doubt there **is** a simple solution. But to categorically reject them as even a component of any possible solution _a priori_ is, to my mind, quite foolish. \*\* obviously, there would be some initial problems due to students moving around and public schools having to perhaps restructure the way they do things. To draw inferences from the initial effects would be utterly absurd; one should give the system enough time to work through the initial problems before making conclusions about it. How long the period required would be is something that I honestly can’t address.