School Voucher Program Gets a Failing Grade in Louisiana
Many advocates of school choice rightly point out that students from wealthy families already have school choice because wealthy families have more options when selecting where to live and where to educate their children. Implementing school choice for all other students, advocates argue, levels the playing field and gives students from poorer families the opportunity to succeed.
A new working paper out this week raises some doubts about this argument. In a study of a Louisiana program providing children of low-income families vouchers to attend participating private schools, researchers found that attending one of those schools negatively affected students’ academic performances.
The program targets students from families with income below 250 percent of the poverty line because these students face the greatest barriers to scholastic success. Conveniently for researchers and anyone else interested in meaningful data on education reforms, the vouchers were handed out based on a random lottery. This allows us to look at how students eligible for the program performed when they received the vouchers and when they didn’t, with no other meaningful difference between the two groups.
The results of this natural experiment are not encouraging. According to the researchers, the students who attended private schools through the voucher system had math scores that were 0.41 standard deviations lower than their public school peers. Reading, science and social studies scores were also lower.
Younger students appeared to suffer a greater academic shortfall than older students. Overall, students who received vouchers were 50 percent more likely to receive failing marks. Those who thought they had “won” the lottery by getting to attend private schools found themselves with the worse deal.
This is particularly disappointing, because the students who received vouchers mostly came from low-performing school districts. This means that we can’t attribute the difference in performance simply to excellent public schools.
But the researchers did find that private schools that accepted vouchers were more likely to have declining enrollment relative to private schools not accepting vouchers. This suggests that underperforming private schools, which are therefore more likely to struggle retaining students, are those that are most likely to participate in the program. This would explain why the program failed in
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