Private school vouchers and student achievement: A fixed effects quantile regression evaluation

Abstract

Fundamental to the recent debate over school choice is the issue of whether voucher programs actually improve students' academic achievement. Using newly developed quantile regression approaches, this paper investigates the distribution of achievement gains in the first school voucher program implemented in the US. We find that while high-performing students selected for the Milwaukee Parental Choice program had a positive, convexly increasing gain in mathematics, low-performing students had a nearly linear loss. However, the program seems to prevent low-performing students from having an even bigger loss experienced by students in the public schools.