Why voucher schools are bad

This is true, but the advocates overlook an important fact: The Zelman case did not address state constitutional issues. Some three dozen states have church-state provisions in their constitutions that are even stronger than the U.

These provisions often more explicitly bar taxpayer money from being used to fund religious schools and education. Private school vouchers would likely be unconstitutional in most states — and some state courts have already ruled that they are.

Americans have repeatedly expressed opposition to vouchers in public opinion polls. More tellingly, when people are given an opportunity to vote directly on vouchers through ballot referenda, they always reject the concept — usually by wide margins.

Since , voters in 23 states have rejected vouchers and other forms of tax aid to religious schools at the ballot box. According to multiple studies of the District of Columbia, Milwaukee and Cleveland school voucher programs, the targeted population does not perform better in reading and math than students in public schools. The U. Department of Education studies of the D. The study also showed that over a period of four years, there was no statistically significant difference between students who were offered a voucher and those who were not in their aspirations for future schooling, engagement in extracurricular activities, frequency of doing homework, attendance at school, reading for enjoyment or tardiness rates.

In fact, students who participated in the program may actually have been more likely to be absent from school. Likewise, there was no significant difference in the student-teacher ratios in their classrooms or the availability of before-and after-school programs in their schools. Vouchers do little to help the poor. The payments often do not cover the entire cost of tuition or other mandatory fees for private schools.

Thus, only families with the money to cover the cost of the rest of the tuition, uniforms, transportation, books and other supplies can use the vouchers. Both groups of students performed similarly in reading. While there are voucher programs available in 13 other states, 40 the D. Opportunity Scholarship Program is the only voucher program with a congressionally mandated evaluation. A week after IES published the evaluation, which reported the negative effects of the D.

This change does not affect the ongoing D. All future evaluations of the federally funded D. As a consequence, the findings of the most recent evaluation of the D. The authors of all four recent voucher studies—in Washington, D. The researchers in the district tested three theories about the negative impacts and found that only one of them may explain some of the learning loss experienced in voucher schools. Of these three, only the instructional time factor proved to be a likely cause.

As in the evaluation, the researchers found that private schools offer less instructional time than public schools. On average, private schools offer In Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio, researchers speculated that participating private schools may lack the immediate capacity and resources to educate students who are academically behind, who are English-language learners, or who have disabilities.

In Indiana, they are also more likely to be English-language learners. Finally, many public schools who lost students to vouchers are on an upward performance trajectory. To put the negative effects of vouchers in perspective, the authors of this report compared the effect of the D. While this context is compelling, comparing and understanding the impacts of smoking are beyond the scope of this analysis. As part of the study, the authors show each negative impact as the equivalent of a specific drop for a student who was average in math—in the 50th percentile—to a lower rank in the same distribution.

This conversion uses the effect size—in the case of the D. The comparable results are meaningful and startling. The impact of attending a participating D.

A public school student who is average in math—in the 50th percentile—declines to the 45th percentile after participating in the D.

An average math student who experiences high teacher turnover drops from the 50th percentile to the 48th. Feeling unsafe in school, experiencing at least 10 teacher absences, and exposure to school crime have the same equivalent effect, dropping to the 49th percentile. A decline in percentile points means that students are substantially falling behind relative to their performance in public school or relative to their similar public school peers, depending on the study.

All the losses associated with these different detrimental interventions are significant. And yet, this comparison shows that students attending a voucher school experienced the largest relative learning loss across all five studies of negative impacts. It is important to note that each study that the authors used only evaluates the impact of one factor in student achievement, when in reality, students are exposed to a variety of environmental and other factors, many of which have the potential to affect test scores.

Therefore, it is possible—and likely—that students are exposed to more than one of the negative factors. For example, a student who witnesses violence in school may also feel unsafe in school.

Further, when comparing these effects with the impact of participating in a voucher programs, it is also possible that students in both public schools and voucher programs experience additional impacts from some of the factors described in these comparison studies.

However, there is no overwhelming evidence that would suggest bias in this comparison; there is no reason to believe that these known factors—teacher turnover, absenteeism, feeling unsafe in school, and exposure to violent crime at school— would occur more in the private sector versus the public sector or vice versa As noted above, this analysis uses only one rigorous, well-regarded study on each topic.

Therefore, using alternative studies could lead to different results. The methods for selecting both specific voucher studies and comparison studies to add context are detailed in the Appendix. Selection criteria included rigorous methods, recent results, and studies that are representative of their field.

The statistical significance; negative or positive sign direction; and magnitude are similar to other rigorous studies addressing these topic areas. In some cases, other similar studies may find an effect in reading but not in math, for example, but maintained the same sign, as well as similar significance and magnitude.

This comparison focuses on math impacts only to allow for an aligned analysis of effects. Further, the evaluation of the D. Ultimately, this comparison shows that the negative impact of the D. The wave of voucher studies with negative findings in recent years have put some advocates in a bind. As studies consistently show negative outcomes, voucher proponents have backtracked or tried to spin the findings. Recent research on statewide voucher programs in Louisiana and Indiana has found that public school students that received vouchers to attend private schools subsequently scored lower on reading and math tests compared to similar students that remained in public schools.

The magnitudes of the negative impacts were large. These studies used rigorous research designs that allow for strong causal conclusions. And they showed that the results were not explained by the particular tests that were used or the possibility that students receiving vouchers transferred out of above-average public schools. Another explanation is that our historical understanding of the superior performance of private schools is no longer accurate.

Since the nineties, public schools have been under heavy pressure to improve test scores. Private schools were exempt from these accountability requirements. A recent study showed that public schools closed the score gap with private schools. That study did not look specifically at Louisiana and Indiana, but trends in scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress for public school students in those states are similar to national trends.

A case to use taxpayer funds to send children of low-income parents to private schools is based on an expectation that the outcome will be positive. These recent findings point in the other direction. More needs to be known about long-term outcomes from these recently implemented voucher programs to make the case that they are a good investment of public funds.

As well, we need to know if private schools would up their game in a scenario in which their performance with voucher students is reported publicly and subject to both regulatory and market accountability.

Recent research on statewide voucher programs in Louisiana and Indiana has found that public school students that received vouchers to attend private schools scored lower compared to similar students who did not attend private schools. The magnitudes of the negative impacts were large, too.

In Louisiana, a public school student who was average in math at the 50th percentile and began attending a private school using a voucher declined to the 34th percentile after one year. If that student was in third, fourth, or fifth grade, the decline was steeper, to the 26th percentile. Reading declined, too: a student at the 50th percentile in reading declined to about the 46th percentile.

In Indiana, a student who had entered a private school with a math score at the 50th percentile declined to the 44th percentile after one year. In each location, students applied to receive a voucher, which would be paid to the private school they chose to attend. White Thursday, June 23, Hence, parents who make use of school vouchers can also make their life much easier by sending their kids to a school which is located nearby their work or even nearby their home so that picking up the kids from school does not take too much time.

Since school vouchers give kids the opportunity to choose from a big selection of schools in their area, kids will also have the opportunity to attend the same schools as their childhood friends. For instance, if your kid has a good childhood friend and urgently wants to go to school with him or her, you can talk to the parents of the other kid and apply for the same school.

In turn, your kids will likely be able to attend the same school, which can benefit both of them since they will often have similar schedules and can also help each other with their homework.

In general, especially in big cities, it can also be quite exhausting to bring your kid to school every morning. Quite often, you will get stuck in traffic jams and have to spend plenty of precious time in traffic. Depending on where you live, you might even have to drive long distances in order to bring your kid to school. However, with school vouchers, you may be able to save plenty of time by choosing a school that is closer to your home since commuting times to this school will be far lower.

Private schools are also known to provide better education compared to public schools on average. Since education is quite important to succeed in all parts of life, many parents want to make sure that their kid gets the best education possible.

Hence, through the introduction of the school voucher concept, more children will be able to enjoy education from private schools, which may translate into better job opportunities and more success in life in general. The concept of school vouchers is especially beneficial for families who cannot afford to send their kids to private school due to the high tuition fees that are often associated with them.

Therefore, poor families often have to send their kids to rather bad public schools where the education level is usually quite low. In turn, the gap between the poor and the rich can be decreased to a certain extent and children from poor families may also be better able to escape poverty. Since children are more flexible regarding the school they want to go with school vouchers, they are also able to choose their favorite school according to their individual preferences. For instance, some schools may be well-known to offer students a variety of different sports which they can choose from.

Whatever hobbies your kid has, there will be a school where those hobbies are supported and if your kid is able to attend one of those schools, chances are that he or she will be much happier compared to a state where your kid is forced to attend a certain school and does not have a choice at all.

For instance, many world-class athletes have already shown those talents when they were quite young. However, in order to really become world-class at something, kids need support from teachers in order to progress and to become really good at their craft. Yet, in public schools, there will often be not enough professional staff around that is skilled enough to support kids with those individual talents and many children will therefore never have the opportunity to become really good, even though they had the talent.