Louisiana Voucher Program Leaves Students Behind, One Study Shows
Participation in Louisiana's voucher program increased the likelihood of a failing score by 24 to 50 percent, study shows.
McDonogh #35 Senior High School graduates stand at their commencement at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on May 14, 2015 in New Orleans.
Students who won publicly funded vouchers to escape their failing public schools and enroll in private schools are doing worse academically than those who weren't awarded vouchers and remained in low-performing schools.
That's the startling new finding from a working paper that analyzed Louisiana's private school voucher program.
The team of researchers from University of California, Berkley, Duke University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that attendance at a private school significantly lowered students' math, reading, science and social studies scores, and, in particular, it increased the likelihood of a failing score by 24 to 50 percent.
The negative impacts, the paper notes, are consistent across income groups, geographic areas, and private school characteristics, and are larger for younger children.
"These results suggest caution in the design of voucher systems aimed at expanding school choice for disadvantaged students," the researchers wrote.
The paper, which is still a work in progress, comes as states across the country mull similar programs and the private school choice sector is hitting a stride: Since 2009, the number of students using vouchers has increased by 130 percent, according to the Alliance for School Choice.
Some potential explanations for the precipitous drop in student achievement include the fact that the researchers captured results that reflect a significant transition for students shifting from public to private school.
"We might expect a negative effect, but the size of the negative math impact is pretty large, so it could be more than just a short-term effect," says Patrick Wolf, education professor at the University of Arkansas, who also studies the impact of private school choice programs.
Wolfe has been leading a research team in a two-year longitudinal study of Louisiana's voucher Louisiana Voucher Program Leaves Students Behind, One Study Shows - US News: