Vouchers? A bad idea and here is several reasons why.
This post reviews a short paper by Dr. John Merrifield and Joseph Blast as well as research on vouchers in peer-reviewed journal articles and books. The paper by Merrifield and Blast has not been peer-reviewed or published in any manner other than a policy brief.
For those of you who don’t have the time to read the entire post, here is a summary of the points, most of which are detailed n the post and ALL of which are supported by evidence or research:
1) SERIOUS FLAWS IN THE MERRIFIELD AND BLAST STUDY.
The paper by Merrifield and Blast has serious flaws that make their conclusions difficult to accept. These flaws include reliance on ONE STUDY that they fail to adequately describe, faulty data (that easily could have been corrected with a few hours of work), and assumption laid upon assumption that is not supported by any research or by apples-to-oranges comparisons that don’t provide support for a statewide program. Thus, the quality of the paper is low and should be read with extreme caution given the errors and assumptions inherent in the paper.
2) THE AUTHORS UNDERESTIMATE THE TRUE COST OF TUITION IN PRIVATE SCHOOLS BY AT LEAST $1,000 PER YEAR.
Private school tuition is far greater than what the authors claim to the point that the voucher would not cover most of the urban area tuition costs for private schools and certainly not all of the associated costs with enro