[mannerheim]

> Vouchers don't improve student achievement (Stanford, 2017)

So not worse, then.

> Students in Louisiana's voucher program showed a decline in scores, especially math:

Let's see...

> Any changes in the second year of reading were unclear.

Hmm.

> Past research on Louisiana’s school-voucher program came to a bleak conclusion: Students who used the program to transfer to a private school saw their test scores plummet.

> A new study complicates that narrative, finding some good—or at least, less bad—news about the closely watched program.

> The research shows that, for students who received a voucher at the middle or end of elementary school, there were no statistically significant effects on their math or reading test scores by the third year in the program. That’s a boon for voucher advocates who have argued against judging a program by its initial impacts.

> The research shows that, for students who received a voucher at the middle or end of elementary school, there were no statistically significant effects on their math or reading test scores by the third year in the program. That’s a boon for voucher advocates who have argued against judging a program by its initial impacts.

They deliberately cut the results off in the second year because the study was conducted by those whose livelihoods are threatened by vouchers.

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/532137/

[MengerSponge]

So at best it's net neutral in educational outcomes, with increased administrative costs? Neat. Sounds like a great policy.

What evidence is there that vouchers are helpful?

Who benefits? (the answer here isn't "everybody")

[bitshiftfaced]

> What evidence is there that vouchers are helpful?

> Who benefits? (the answer here isn't "everybody")

In areas that have done charter schools, the result is that poor-performing school administrations/companies (in terms of standardized tests) lose their charter and effectively "close down." Better performing ones are allowed to replace them.

The students benefit because they end up with better quality educations. They're no longer forced to go to terrible schools that keep getting money thrown at them despite having deeply-rooted problems: problems that the school has no incentive to fix due to the way the current public schooling system works.

[MengerSponge]

Charters aren't vouchers. They've got their own issues, but they're a fundamentally different tool.

> The students benefit because they end up with better quality educations.

Citation needed. In fact, in many cases, students end up worse off.

[bitshiftfaced]

> Colombia's PACES program provided over 125,000 poor children with vouchers that covered the cost of private secondary school. The vouchers were renewable annually conditional on adequate academic progress. Since many vouchers were assigned by lottery, program effects can reliably be assessed by comparing lottery winners and losers. Estimates using administrative records suggest the PACES program increases secondary school completion rates by 15 to 20 percent. Correcting for the greater percentage of lottery winners taking college admissions tests, the program increased test scores by two-tenths of a standard deviation in the distribution of potential test scores.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.96.3.847

> The District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) has operated in the nation's capital since 2004, funded by a federal government appropriation. Because the program was oversubscribed in its early years of operation, and vouchers were awarded by lottery, we were able to use the “gold standard” evaluation method of a randomized experiment to determine what impacts the OSP had on student outcomes. Our analysis revealed compelling evidence that the DC voucher program had a positive impact on high school graduation rates, suggestive evidence that the program increased reading achievement, and no evidence that it affected math achievement.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pam.21691

> We use the introduction of a means-tested voucher program in Florida to examine whether increased competitive pressure on public schools affects students' test scores. We find greater score improvements in the wake of the program introduction for students attending schools that faced more competitive private school markets prior to the policy announcement, especially those that faced the greatest financial incentives to retain students. These effects suggest modest benefits for public school students from increased competition. The effects are consistent across several geocoded measures of competition and isolate competitive effects from changes in student composition or resource levels in public schools.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.6.1.133

[notadev]

I benefit by sending my child to a school where the teachers are incentivized to teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic, while leaving their politics and activism at the door.

[mannerheim]

> What evidence is there that vouchers are helpful?

> James also said that school choice has “not proven effective at improving education.” That is also highly misleading. Ten of the 16 random assignment evaluations on the topic find that private school choice programs increased math or reading test scores overall or for student subgroups at a fraction of the cost. Only two of the 16 random assignment studies, both of which examined the highly regulated Louisiana voucher program, found negative effects on test scores. And four of the six rigorous studies on the topic found that private school choice increased educational attainment overall or for student subgroups. None of the six studies found that school choice reduced educational attainment.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/setting-record-straight-scho...

> Who benefits? (the answer here isn't "everybody")

Of course not everybody. Public school teachers and administrators will suffer tremendously should school choice be more widely adopted.