Academic Evidence that School Choice Works [View All]

[BrentWil]

I have been having an interesting discussion in a thread concerning education reform. To me, the best choice would be a plan that allows the poor to have control over federal resources in order to attain education wherever they see fit. In other words, I want to empowerment of people who do not have much power, at least in this very important area. One thing I can't get over, is that academic research tends to show a positive effect for kids, if there is competition and choice for the parent. It is something that is quantifiable and seems to work in different cultures. Certainly there are a few studies that show no effect, but this does not represent the majority of the body of work. However, this seems to be a sensitive area for certain members of DU.

My main problem with conservative education reform is that the resources will go to those who already have a choice. A 2K voucher will simply be a tax cut for someone already sending their kid to a private school The resources have to be focused and the program has to make sense, but I have yet to hear why providing choice for the truly needy is a bad thing. Anyway, as a means to continue and widen the debate (and at the risk of being called rightwing), here are a few academic articles that present evidence that certain types of policies do in fact work. There are far more I could provide, but I thought this was a good start


Title: Private school vouchers and student achievement: An evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program

Author(s): Rouse CE
Source: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS Volume: 113 Issue: 2 Pages: 553-602 Published: MAY 1998

The results using the quasi-experimental applicant control group and the random sample of students from the Milwaukee public schools as a comparison group (when I include individual fixed-effects) are remarkably similar. On the one hand, I find that, on average, students selected for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and those enrolled in the participating private schools likely scored 1.5–2.3 percentile points per year in math more than students in the comparison groups.

School vouchers in practice: competition will not hurt you
Author(s): Sandstrom FM, Bergstrom F
Source: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS Volume: 89 Issue: 2-3 Pages: 351-380 Published: FEB 2005

Because the decision on which school to attend is a choice variable, sample selection models are used. To account for the potential endogeneity of the share of students attending independent schools, we use instrumental variable estimation. We also estimate panel data models on 288 Swedish municipalities. Our findings support the hypothesis that school results in public schools improve due to competition.

Education vouchers, growth, and income inequality
Author(s): Cardak BA
Source: MACROECONOMIC DYNAMICS Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 98-121 Published: FEB 2005

Increased economic growth has been largely ignored as a potential benefit of education vouchers. In a setting where households can opt out of public education in preference for private education, private-education vouchers have been shown to offer increased economic growth. Taxes were held constant and it was shown that a given public education budget can be redistributed through the use of private- education vouchers in a way that will increase per capita human wealth and in some cases increase the human wealth of all households.

Private-education vouchers generated increased economic growth through a fiscal spillover. The tax base grew through a redistribution of the wealthier public-education students into the private education system where they accumulated greater amounts of human capital. This drove increases in public education expenditure, generating growth for the students remaining in public education. Similar growth enhancement might be generated by ability-tracking or selective-entry schools; however, such systems require some decision rule on how to select students.

itle: School finance - Raising questions for urban schools
Author(s): Reyes AH, Rodriguez GM
Source: EDUCATION AND URBAN SOCIETY Volume: 37 Issue: 1 Pages: 3-21 Published: NOV 2004

Decentralized budgeting, or campus-based budgeting, allows instruction to drive the school bud- get rather than a central office business manager with district-wide budget allocations; however, there is little evidence of successful budget decentral- ization models. Also, there is evidence that suggests that when charter schools compete with local public schools, there are improvements in academic performance for students who remain in the public schools; however, only in comparison with underperforming public schools are vouchers and charters effective

Access, school choice, and independent black institutions - A historical perspective
Author(s): Bush L
Source: JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES Volume: 34 Issue: 3 Pages: 386-401 Published: JAN 2004

The miseducation and undereducation of African Americans certainly creates a critical need for alternative forms of schooling. Though IBIs have been willing for some time now to serve in this needed capacity, their growth has been challenged by financial concerns. In the short run, funds from voucher and charter pro- grams appear to allow IBIs to expand their physical schooling operations to some degree. The degree to which the ideological paradigms of IBIs have been able to expand in the short run seems to vary. Certainly, this area needs some future research.

Title: Differences in Scholastic Achievement of Public, Private Government-Dependent, and Private Independent Schools A Cross-National Analysis
Author(s): Dronkers J, Robert P
Source: EDUCATIONAL POLICY Volume: 22 Issue: 4 Pages: 541-577 Published: JUL 2008

The main differences in the gross scholastic achievements of private and public schools in these 22 countries can be explained by differences in their student intake and by the related differences in school composition. But our analysis also shows that private government-dependent schools have a higher net scholastic achievement in reading than do comparable public schools with the same students, parents, and social composition. This higher scholastic achievement is also substantial because the reading score difference between attending a public or a private government-dependent school is equal to the negative effect of having two more siblings. The explanation is the existence of a better school climate in the former versus the latter. The different admin- istrative, learning, and teaching conditions in private government-dependent and public schools do not explain differences in this net scholastic achievement. This does not mean that private government-dependent schools do not have a more favorable student intake and social composition or that it explains the largest part of the higher gross educational outcomes of their students. Rather, it only means that next to student characteristics and social composition, the more favorable school climate does provide the explanation of the net higher educational outcomes of students from private government-dependent schools, in comparison to both public and private independent schools with the same students, same composition, and same conditions.