False Advertising: It is used to Steal Public School Taxes!
This is an article by The Brookings Institute describing the results of their study of voucher students' performance in Louisiana. The study shows that the academic performance of voucher students drops dramatically after students transfer to a voucher school compared to their performance in their original public schools.
Take a look at the claims in this mailing that is being sent to public school parents right now encouraging students to apply for vouchers to the same private schools included in the Brookings study.
In Louisiana, the voucher program can pay for up to $5,300 per student to allow children to attend a participating private school. The majority of the voucher schools choosing to participate are parochial or religious schools. Previous reports have revealed that some of these schools could not remain open if they did not have a significant number of voucher students.
The vouchers (tuition scholarships) were sold to the Legislature originally as a way to allow low income students to escape failing public schools and to attend better schools. The definition in the law for a so called "failing school" in the voucher legislation was set at a rating of "C" or below. No one bothered to develop an initial rating system for the private schools that would be eligible to receive voucher students. Later, however, such schools may be barred from receiving additional voucher students if voucher test scores are rated as failing. But many voucher schools are not rated by this method because they have too few voucher students.
Based on the Brookings Institute study the people sending out the advertisements shown above should be sued for false advertising! These mailings are paid for by the American Federation for Children Growth Fund.
The Brookings study found that Louisiana was a good candidate for a study of relative performance of students in voucher schools because the participants are selected at random using a lottery system. This may prevent selection of the most capable students. Other researchers have pointed out however, that many parents of more motivated or capable students are self selected by the fact that they took the trouble to apply. Nevertheless, the study concludes that the students that are losers in the lottery are better off because they will continue to attend their public school where their performance is better than that of the voucher "winners"!
One of the voucher and charter school proponents in the legislature has suggested that parents of public school students should be able to attach their MFP dollars to their child just like a backpack (Representative Nancy Landry of Lafayette) and send them to the school of their choice since it is their MFP money and it should be their right to choose the school their child will attend with those dollars. This assertion is simply not true and is also a form of false advertising!
It turns out that more than two thirds of the MFP is funded by Louisiana Educator: False Advertising: It is used to Steal Public School Taxes!: