Private School Choice Programs Research Articles

Effects of Maturing Private School Choice Programs on Public School Students

Using a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and leveraging a student fixed effects design, we explore how a Florida private school choice program affected public school students’ outcomes as the program matured and scaled up. We observe growing benefits (higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism and suspension rates) to students attending public schools with more preprogram private school options as the program matured. Effects are particularly pronounced for lower-income students, but results are positive for more affluent students as well. Local and district-wide private school competition are both independently related to student outcomes. (JEL H75, I21, I22, I28)

Principled Politics, Regulatory Reluctance: Conditions Moderating Private School Choice Program Participation

ABSTRACT Private school leaders consider the potential benefits of private school choice program participation against costs associated with program regulations. Rational Choice Theory suggests leaders in states with conditions related to greater likelihood of program passage may be less willing to accept such regulations. To test this theory, we merge experimental data from a national study of private school choice program regulations with state-level data on political partisanship and union strength. We find limited evidence of heterogeneity by partisanship. We find leaders in states with weaker teachers’ unions are more reluctant to accept standardized testing requirements and copay prohibition.

The Effects of Regulations on Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence from the United States

Private school leaders weigh costs and benefits when deciding whether to participate in school voucher programs. Regulatory costs associated with accepting voucher funding could reduce private school leaders’ willingness to participate. We test this hypothesis through the first random assignment analysis of the effects of various regulations on the expressed willingness of private school leaders to participate in hypothetical voucher programs that draws upon national data. We randomly assign different regulations to U.S. private school leaders and ask them whether they would participate in a hypothetical school voucher program during the following school year. Relative to no regulations, we find that open-enrollment mandates reduce the likelihood that private school leaders report being certain to participate in a hypothetical choice program by about 14 percentage points, or 67%. The requirement that private schools accept the voucher funding amount as payment-in-full reduces the likelihood that private school leaders report being certain to participate by 16 percentage points, or 77%. Some regulations are more likely to deter private schools with higher reported tuitions, higher enrollment trends, more specialization, and more climate problems.

The Effect of Private School Choice Regulations on School Participation: Experimental Evidence from the Christian School Sector

ABSTRACT Private school choice programs’ success depends partly on the supply of private schools. Many parents prioritize a religious education for their children. Therefore, it is important to consider how religious private schools may respond to various program regulations. We conducted an experimental study surveying a national sample of 354 leaders of Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) member schools, the second largest private school organization of any kind in the United States. We find evidence that while over four-fifths of Christian school leaders are inclined to participate with no changes to school operations, open enrollment mandates reduce participation rates by 62 percentage points and employment regulations reduce participation rates by 79 percentage points.

Who supports MO private school choice? Evidence from likely voters in Missouri

In the first half of 2021, 33 states considered new private school choice legislation. Despite this legislative interest, public opinion on private school choice remains varied. In this paper, we examine voter support for private school choice in Missouri, a politically conservative state that lacked a private school choice program until 2021. We conduct a survey experiment to gauge support for the expansion of private school choice to religious schools, assess preferences for universal or targeted student access, and explore opinions regarding the regulation of participating private schools. We find voters are significantly less likely to support voucher expansion when primed to consider that vouchers could be used at religiously affiliated schools. Political ideology, racial identity, college exposure, and family income are significant predictors of voucher support. Regulation support varies widely, with the strongest support for adherence to state testing requirements and the lowest support for waiving admissions requirements for voucher students. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for Missouri’s recently passed private school choice program, particularly by considering ways in which political compromise may be reached to implement the program in a manner conscious of heterogeneous voter preferences.

Policy Feedback and the Polarization of Interest Groups

AbstractWe use the case of education interest groups to examine how and when policy changes lead interest groups to polarize in their support for political parties. Using over 145,000 campaign contributions from all 50 states from 2000 to 2017, we test whether the passage of private school choice, charter laws, and labor retrenchment policies led to the polarization of education interest groups over time. In 2000, teachers unions were the dominant group and mostly aligned with Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans lacked support from any education groups. This pattern was consistent across states. Over time, coalitions in some states became polarized, meaning unions grew even more aligned with Democrats and reform groups with Republicans, while other states did not experience such polarization. We show that private school choice programs, but not labor retrenchment or charter laws, contributed to this changing partisan alignment. Our findings demonstrate that policy feedback can shape both the electoral mobilization and party alignments of interest groups.

Effects of Scaling Up Private School Choice Programs on Public School Students

Using a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and a student fixed effect design, we explore how the massive scale-up of a Florida private school choice program affected public school students’ outcomes. Expansion of the program produced modestly larger benefits for students attending public schools that had a larger initial degree of private school options, measured prior to the introduction of the voucher program. These benefits include higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism and suspension rates. Effects are particularly pronounced for lower-income students, but results are positive for more affluent students as well. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Effects of Scaling Up Private School Choice Programs on Public School Students

Using a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and a student fixed effect design, we explore how the massive scale-up of a Florida private school choice program affected public school students’ outcomes. Expansion of the program produced modestly larger benefits for students attending public schools that had a larger initial degree of private school options, measured prior to the introduction of the voucher program. These benefits include higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism and suspension rates. Effects are particularly pronounced for lower-income students, but results are positive for more affluent students as well.

Centring race in contemporary educational privatization policies: the genealogy of U.S. ‘private school choice’ and its implications for research

ABSTRACT Just ahead of the 2017 U.S. presidential inauguration the Hoover Institute convened a forum to explore policy avenues for privatizing public education. The option favoured by forum moderator and Fordham Institute President, Michael Petrilli, was the tax-credit scholarship, a policy currently employed in 18 states. Funded through donations from corporations and individuals whoreceive a tax benefit, these programs are managed through state revenue codes, not education codes. In 2019,U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos proposed a federal private school choice program despite the fact that evaluations have struggled to demonstrate any evidence of educational benefit. This paper argues that present-day efforts to privatize public education are rooted in social, political, and economic projects that consolidate power among white Americans. Finally, the paper sketches the contours of a historical-geographic materialist research agenda that examines the implications of privatization in public education for racial justice.

When Being Regulated is a Choice: The Impact of Government Policies on Private School Participation in Voucher Programs

ABSTRACT Private school voucher programs provide government subsidies to eligible students for tuition and other education-related costs. Parents participating in choice programs benefit from a larger and more diverse supply of education providers. Private schools must choose whether or not to participate in a voucher program in their community. In deciding, private school leaders likely weigh program participation benefits against any associated regulatory costs. The higher the regulatory costs of participation, the less likely a private school is to participate in a school voucher program, given a fixed amount of benefit. Since we do not know with certainty which regulations will be viewed by school leaders as more or less costly, we explore whether specific regulations that are common to private school choice programs do or do not deter likely voucher program participation. We use a survey experiment to identify regulatory provisions that are deal-breakers for private schools. We randomly assign different regulations to 4,825 private school leaders in the states of California and New York and ask them whether or not they would participate in a new school voucher program during the following school year. Relative to no regulations, our most conservative models find that open-enrollment mandates reduce the likelihood that private school leaders are certain to participate in a hypothetical choice program by about 19 percentage points, or 60%. State standardized testing requirements reduce the likelihood that private school leaders are certain to participate by 9 percentage points, or 29%. We find no evidence to suggest that the prohibition of copayment or nationally norm-referenced testing requirements affect the overall willingness to participate in a voucher program.

Out of Pocket? Out of Reach: How Hidden Costs Affect Participation in a Means-Tested School Choice Program

ABSTRACT We examine how low-income parents who apply for North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship program navigate major obstacles to their full participation in this means-tested private school choice program. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study draws upon administrative data from the state agency that oversees the program, surveys of every applicant family across two consecutive school years (2015–16 and 2016–17), and focus group data from two regions of the state. We uncover four major themes related to applicant families’ decisions to explicitly or implicitly decline the offer of a private school voucher: Program eligibility requirements, parents’ difficulties acquiring program information to assist with the application process, students’ inadequate academic preparation, and financial barriers to participation. Even though eligible families can qualify for financial assistance of up to $4,200 per year, hidden costs appear to play a particularly important role in voucher use. We discuss the policy implications of these findings and offer recommendations.

The Fiscal Impact of K-12 Educational Choice: Using Random Assignment Studies of Private School Choice Programs to Infer Student Switcher Rates

ABSTRACT The rate of students switching from public schools to private schools because they received a scholarship and would not have switched without the subsidy (“switcher rate”) is an integral factor for reliably estimating the net fiscal impact of private school choice programs. Switcher rates observed among students in control groups in random assignment studies can provide useful information for inferring switcher rates among program participants when conducting fiscal analyses. This paper identifies 27 estimates of switcher rates from eight lottery-based evaluations of six private school choice programs in the United States that report information about which types of school students enroll in after they apply to a choice program and do not win a lottery. Switcher rates for both full samples and subgroups of students range from 52 percent to 98 percent. Lower bound weighted average and median switcher rates from these studies are 84 percent. Upper bound weighted average and median switcher rates are 90 percent and 89 percent, respectively. Switcher rates are slightly higher for African American students participating in three privately funded school choice programs, where the average switcher rate for these students is 93 percent and the median is 94 percent. Switcher rates observed in these studies are remarkably stable across time and states, and they can provide useful information for inferring switcher rates in fiscal analyses.

The Effects of Regulations on Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence from Florida

ObjectiveThis is the first experimental evaluation of the effects of various regulations on the willingness of private school leaders to participate in a hypothetical school voucher program.MethodsWe use surveys to randomly assign different regulations to 2,958 private school leaders in Florida and ask them whether they would participate in a new private school choice program during the following school year.ResultsWe received responses from 327 private school leaders. Relative to no additional regulations, our most conservative models find that open‐enrollment mandates reduce the likelihood that private schools are certain to participate by 17 percentage points or 70 percent. State standardized testing requirements reduce the likelihood that private schools are certain to participate by 12 percentage points or 46 percent. We find no evidence to suggest that the prohibition of copayment affects participation overall. We find limited evidence to suggest that regulations are more likely to deter higher‐quality schools.as measured by tuition levels and enrollment trends.ConclusionThese results suggest that various regulations of private school choice programs come with costs and perhaps unintended consequences.

Is School Choice a “Trojan Horse?” The Effects of School Choice Laws on Homeschool Prevalence

ABSTRACTSchool choice programs such as vouchers and charter schools expand lower cost schooling options for families. We examine how these expansions affect the prevalence of homeschooling. School choice programs may reduce homeschooling if parents that otherwise would have homeschooled their children instead use a school choice program. Homeschooling may increase if school choice programs act as a “Trojan Horse” by expanding government control in otherwise independent schools, pushing some families away from those options. We empirically examine the legitimacy of such claims by looking at the effects of public and private school choice programs on the market share of homeschooling. We use difference-in-differences to estimate whether voucher programs and charter schools influence homeschooling.

Do You Get Cream with Your Choice? Characteristics of Students Who Moved into or Out of the Louisiana Scholarship Program

Private school choice programs often are accused of failing to serve disadvantaged students. Critics claim that participating private schools “skim the cream off the top” by admitting only the best students and “push out” students who are the most difficult to teach. This study tests these student selection hypotheses in the context of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). We find LSP applicants are less advantaged than their public school peers regarding their family socioeconomic status and initial test scores. No consistent evidence indicates that the LSP private schools are “skimming the cream” or “pushing out” students based on their family social status or initial test scores. However, students with disabilities are less likely than students without disabilities to use a voucher initially. Students who were placed in LSP private schools that were farther from their homes or that serve a larger minority population are more likely to leave their LSP schools than LSP students placed in schools closer to their homes or that serve smaller minority populations. LSP students with better educational resources in their residential public school district are more likely to leave the LSP than students with worse educational resources. Finally, the LSP students still using vouchers after three years are more likely to have a low family income, more likely to be African American, and more likely to be female than the population of non-applicants to the program.

The Effects of Regulations on Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence from California and New York

Although private school voucher programs provide subsidies to students for tuition and other education-related costs, private school leaders weigh program participation against any associated regulatory costs. The higher the regulatory costs of participation, the less likely a private school is to participate in a school voucher program. Since we do not know with certainty which regulations will be viewed by school leaders as more or less costly, we explore whether specific regulations that are common to private school choice programs do or do not deter likely voucher program participation. We use surveys to randomly assign different regulations to 4,825 private school leaders in the states of California and New York and ask them whether or not they would participate in a new private school choice program during the following school year. Relative to no regulations, our most conservative models find that open-enrollment mandates reduce the likelihood that private school leaders are certain to participate in a hypothetical choice program by about 19 percentage points, or 60 percent. State standardized testing requirements reduce the likelihood that private school leaders are certain to participate by 9 percentage points, or 29 percent. We find no evidence to suggest that the prohibition of copayment or nationally norm-referenced testing requirements affect the overall willingness to participate in a school choice program.

Attenuated Governance: How Policymakers Insulate Private School Choice from Legal Challenge

Indirect or delegated governance engages private organizations, tax expenditures, or service users to deliver programs that would otherwise be provided by the government directly. This paper explains the rise of indirect governance in terms of policymakers’ strategic use of “attenuation” to avoid political and legal challenge. Attenuation is the process by which a government obscures its role in promoting a particular policy goal, through communication strategies (attenuating rhetoric), or by utilizing private third parties and the tax system to deliver a benefit (attenuated design). Deploying policy‐maker interviews and an original historical database of private school choice programs and their legal and political defense, 1953–2017, I argue that pursuing both attenuated design and attenuating rhetoric at once helps policies pass and spread by publicly dissociating the government from legally contentious policy outputs.

Competitive Impacts of Means-Tested Vouchers on Public School Performance: Evidence from Louisiana

Given the significant growth rate and geographic expansion of private school choice programs over the past two decades, it is important to examine how traditional public schools respond to the sudden injection of competition for students and resources. Although prior studies of this nature have been limited to Florida and Milwaukee, using multiple analytic strategies this paper examines the competitive impacts of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) to determine its achievement impacts on students in affected public schools. Serving 4,954 students in its first year of statewide expansion, this targeted school voucher program provides public funds for low-income students in low-performing public schools to enroll in participating private schools across the state of Louisiana. Using (1) a school fixed effects approach and (2) a regression discontinuity framework to examine the achievement impacts of the LSP on students in affected public schools, this competitive effects analysis reveals neutral to positive impacts that are small in magnitude. Policy implications are discussed.

The Effects of Regulations on Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence from Florida

When deciding whether to participate in a private school choice program, private school leaders weigh additional financial benefits against additional regulatory costs. In theory, raising the costs associated with entering private school choice programs should reduce the likelihood that individual schools participate in those programs. However, very little empirical evidence exists evaluating this idea. While a few studies suggest that more highly regulated programs are correlated with lower levels of school participation, none have established causal relationships between these factors, and none have determined which program regulations are the most costly. Because it is nearly impossible to randomly assign program regulations to individual private schools, we use surveys to randomly assign different regulations to 3,080 private school leaders in Florida and ask them whether they would participate in a new private school choice program during the following school year. Relative to no regulations, our most conservative models find that open-enrollment mandates reduce the likelihood that private schools are certain to participate by about 17 percentage points, or 70 percent. State standardized testing requirements reduce the likelihood that private schools are certain to participate by 11 percentage points, or 44 percent. We find no evidence to suggest that the prohibition of copayment affects program participation overall. These estimates of the impact of regulatory requirements on the expressed willingness of private school principals to participate in a private school choice program are causal because random assignment leads to equivalence in expectation across treatment and control groups on both measurable and unmeasurable factors. We also find evidence to suggest that higher quality schools – as measured by tuition levels and enrollment trends – are more likely to be deterred by program regulations.

SCHOOL CHOICE PROGRAMS AND LOCATION CHOICES OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS

This paper studies how the school choice policies that subsidize private school attendance using public funds affect the spatial distribution of private schools in the United States. Private school choice programs enacted between 1997 and 2010 are examined and linked to private school provision 2 years later. The paper finds that school choice policies lead to more private schools where the input to public schools is lower and the pool of students with special needs is larger. Yet the introduction of means‐tested school choice programs does not necessarily lead private schools to locate in low‐income neighborhoods. (JEL I2, H4, R3)