Private School Voucher Program Research Articles

Cream Skimming and Pushout of Students Participating in a Statewide Private School Voucher Program

A pervasive issue in the school choice literature is whether schools of choice cream skim students by enrolling high-achieving, less-challenging, or less-costly students. Similarly, schools of choice may “push out” low-achieving, more-challenging, or more-costly students. Using longitudinal student-level data from Indiana, we created multiple measures to examine whether there is evidence consistent with the claims of voucher-participating private schools cream skimming the best students from public schools or pushing out voucher-receiving students. We do not find evidence consistent with the claim of cream skimming. However, we find evidence consistent with the claim of private schools pushing out the lowest-achieving voucher students. This is the first study to examine these two issues within a statewide private school voucher program.

Localized ideographs in education rhetoric: Polly Williams and a justice-driven ideology of choice

ABSTRACT The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) is considered the nation’s first private school voucher program and a landmark policy for the contemporary school choice movement. Less well-known is the policy actor responsible for its inception and her view of the policy as a means toward justice for a historically oppressed community. I analyze the discourse of Wisconsin State Representative Polly Williams within the historical context surrounding the MPCP’s 1989 passage, arguing that Williams employs the ideograph “choice” to represent a justice-driven ideology distinct from the “choice” consumer logics of neoliberalism. To attend to the non-dominant ideologies associated with ideographs, this essay suggests that we more fully consider contestation, local geographies, rhetor positionality, and community resources in our ideographic analysis. This project recovers Williams’s “choice” discourse to demonstrate the ways that “choice” can take on an alternative meaning for local publics. In doing so, I consider how the unequal circulation of non-dominant ideologies risks co-optation by more dominant ideologies.

Deal or No Deal? The Effects of Deregulation on Public School Leaders’ Support for Private School Choice in California

Public school leaders might be more likely to support private school voucher programs if they are enacted alongside public school deregulations. We use a survey experiment to examine the effects of public school deregulations on actual public school leaders’ support for a hypothetical private school voucher program in California. We do not find evidence to suggest that public school deregulations affect public school leaders’ support for private school vouchers overall. However, we unexpectedly find that deregulations related to teacher certification and administration of standardized tests further decrease support for private school choice for leaders of large public schools. This unexpected result may be explained by expected adjustment costs or regulatory capture.

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.

An Analysis of the Effects of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program on Student Achievement

The North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program is a private school voucher program that provides state-funded vouchers worth up to $4,200 to eligible students entering kindergarten through 12th grade. Because the public and private school sectors administer different assessments, we recruited approximately 700 students to take a common, nationally normed, standardized test. Matching on baseline achievement and rich demographic data, we use a quasi-experimental inverse propensity weighting approach to maximize comparability between the public and private school student samples. Our preferred specification examines first-year effects for new Opportunity Scholarship students, revealing positive estimates of .36 SD in math and .44 SD in language; there is no effect on reading scores. Results for renewal students are statistically significant in language scores only. In further analyses, we estimate separate effects for private schools that regularly administer another version of the assessment used in this study, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. We conclude by discussing policy implications.

Deal or No Deal? The Effects of Deregulation on Public School Leaders’ Support for Private School Choice in California

Public school leaders might be more likely to support private school voucher programs if they are enacted alongside public school deregulations. We use a survey experiment to examine the effects of public school deregulations on actual public school leaders’ support for a hypothetical private school voucher program in California. We do not find evidence to suggest that public school deregulations affect public school leaders’ support for private school vouchers overall. However, we unexpectedly find that deregulations related to teacher certification and administration of standardized tests further decrease support for private school choice for leaders of large public schools. This unexpected result may be explained by expected adjustment costs or regulatory capture.

The Effect of the Louisiana Scholarship Program on College Entrance

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a private school voucher program available to families who have incomes no greater than 250 percent of the federal poverty line and whose children attend a low performing public school. It began as a pilot program in New Orleans in 2008 and was expanded statewide in 2012. Previous evaluations of the LSP generally found negative impacts of the program on math and English language arts test scores. In this study, we evaluate the effects of the program on college enrollment for the first cohort of students eligible to enter college by 2017-18. Using lottery assignment for a student’s first choice private school, we are able to identify the causal effect of being awarded a scholarship on student attainment for just over 1,000 randomized students who were in the seventh through twelfth grades during the first year of the program. We find that 60% of treatment students who won a lottery and enrolled in their first choice private schools enter college, compared to 59.5% of control students. This difference in not statistically significant. We find no differential treatment effects when considering student enrollment in two- or four-year post-secondary institutions.

Sources of isomorphism in the Milwaukee voucher school sector

In this article, 25 years of data are utilized from nonprofit schools operating in the United States’ oldest and largest private school voucher program to test theories of isomorphism. We find that startup and religious schools belonging to an umbrella organization such as an archdiocese are particularly likely to serve similar student bodies at similar costs. In addition, we find that isomorphic pressures increase the longer a school participates in the Milwaukee voucher program, and that increased program regulation is related to increased sector isomorphism. The results illustrate the difficulty of using New Public Management style reforms, at scale, to encourage a diversity of nongovernment providers to provide a service traditionally provided by the public sector. The results will be of interest to scholars studying nonprofit institutional theories, school choice, and New Public Management style reforms.

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.

Which Schools Participate? An Analysis of Private School Voucher Program Participation Decisions Across Seven Locations

Using data from the most recent (2015-16) round of Private School Universe Survey, I examine the types of private schools that decide to participate in school voucher programs in seven locations. Regression analysis indicates that more specialized private schools are less likely to participate in voucher programs than regular private schools. Specifically, the preferred model finds that private schools that identify as Montessori, special education, and alternative are less likely to participate in voucher programs than schools that identify as regular. In addition, schools that are non-co-educational and schools that focus on serving home-school students are less likely to participate.

Whether to Approve an Education Savings Account Program in Texas: Preventing Crime Does Pay

Decision-makers in Texas have proposed an Education Savings Account (ESA) that would allow all families to take a fraction of their public education financing to a school of their choice. If the ESA funding amount exceeds the school tuition level, families would be able to use these funds for other educational expenses such as tutoring, textbooks, educational therapy, online learning, and college costs. While this is may be viewed as obvious benefits to individual children and their families, the impacts on society overall are less clear.We estimate the impact of the proposed ESA on criminality from 2016 to 2035. We use crime reduction estimates from our previous study of the impact of the longest-standing private school voucher program in the United States, along with existing estimates of the social costs of misdemeanors and felonies, in order to monetize and forecast impacts for the ESA in Texas. We find that a universally-accessible ESA could have large benefits to the state of Texas through reduced crime over the first 20 years of the program. Specifically, we estimate that the first cohort of high school students to experience four years of a universal ESA program in Texas would produce 749 fewer felonies and misdemeanors by the time they become 22 years old, resulting in about $7 million in benefits to society by 2025. The cumulative social benefits would amount to $74 million by the end of 2030 and $194 million by the end of 2035.

Educational Attainment Effects of Public and Private School Choice

The two fastest growing school choice options are charter schools and private school voucher programs (independently, as tax credit scholarships, and as part of educational savings accounts). Most of the research assessing the effects of these programs focuses on student achievement. I review the literature to determine the impact public and private school choice programs are having on high school completion, college enrollment, and college persistence which, ultimately, may be different and of greater consequence than test scores. Furthermore, as educational attainment affects earnings and other life outcomes, those findings are reported when available. In sum, of the 12 studies presented it appears that school choice programs are having a positive effect on educational attainment overall, with similar results for both types of choice programs. However, there is too little research to draw firm conclusions at this time.

Organizational Failure in the Hollow State: Lessons from the Milwaukee Voucher Experience

ABSTRACTIn this conceptual article we use the experience of the longstanding Milwaukee private school voucher program to categorize different failure types within the hollow state. Specifically, we argue that the overall performance of the hollow state is dependent on the performance of organizations operating within the hollow state, that organizational failures are inevitable in hollow state activities, and that such failures can be categorized as marketplace failures, service failures, institutional failures, or customer service failures. We conclude that policy makers must plan for the reality of organizational failures in the hollow state if such arrangements are to be effective.

School Vouchers and Student Neighborhoods: Evidence from the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program

In this paper we explore the relationship between students’ residential location and participation in Milwaukee’s large, widely available private school voucher program. We are interested in one overarching question: do voucher schools disproportionately draw students from better public schools and city neighborhoods, or do they draw students most in need of alternative options? We consider whether the public schools attended by students in neighborhoods contributing large numbers of students to the voucher program are more or less effective than those attended by students in neighborhoods with fewer voucher students. We also consider whether voucher students are located in city neighborhoods that directly contribute more or less to student outcomes. We find consistent evidence that neighborhoods whose students attend less effective public schools and neighborhoods with lower academic outcomes contribute disproportionately to the voucher program. This evidence is quite consistent with patterns apparent on Census-based observational measures of neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics: higher rates of voucher use are found in the least advantaged neighborhoods. We also find, however, that disadvantaged students in general are those most likely to leave the voucher program after enrolling.

Changes in School Enrollment Patterns After the First-Time Release of School-Level Test Scores in Milwaukee’s School Voucher Program

Since 1990, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) has enabled low and middle-income parents to attend private Milwaukee schools at state expense. In 2010, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released, for the first time, results of newly required state standardized tests for students using the MPCP. This article uses an original data set from Milwaukee’s two-decade-old private school voucher program to test several hypotheses on the impact of the first public release of test scores on school enrollment patterns. Specifically, the article uses quantitative methods to test (a) whether enrollment decreased at lower performing schools, (b) whether low-performing schools were more likely to close compared with higher performing schools, and (c) whether historical school-level growth patterns were significantly different after the release of test scores. The article finds that enrollment increases at higher performing schools were larger than at low-performing schools. However, the link between test scores and enrollment patterns disappears after controlling for available school-level characteristics. The analysis provides a first peek at how a transparency intervention affects enrollment patterns in an education marketplace.

Estimating the Effects of Private School Vouchers in Multidistrict Economies

This paper estimates a general equilibrium model of school quality and household residential and school choice for economies with multiple public school districts and private (religious and nonsectarian) schools. The estimates, obtained through full-solution methods, are used to simulate two large-scale private school voucher programs in the Chicago metropolitan area: universal vouchers and vouchers restricted to nonsectarian schools. In the simulations, both programs increase private school enrollment and affect household residential choice. Under nonsectarian vouchers, however, private school enrollment expands less than under universal vouchers, and religious school enrollment declines for large nonsectarian vouchers. Fewer households benefit from nonsectarian vouchers. (JEL H75, I21, I22)

Looking Inside the Black Box: What School Factors Explain Voucher Gains in Washington, DC?

Several evaluations of private school voucher programs in the United States have reported achievement gains for voucher users, particularly African Americans. These studies tend to be structured as Randomized Field Trials (RFTs) in which participants are assigned to treatment (offered a voucher) and control (not offered a voucher) groups by lottery. A major advantage of RFTs is that the randomization process controls for a number of factors, measurable and unmeasurable, that otherwise might confound the assessment of voucher effects. A major shortcoming of RFTs is that they tend to be "black box" evaluations that tell policy analysts precious little about why or how a policy intervention yields benefits downstream. In this article we use data from the 2nd-year RFT of the Washington, DC, privately funded voucher program, supplemented by information obtained from the schools that participating students attended, in an effort to identify what school features or practices might be boosting the achievement of voucher students. This preliminary analysis suggests that less extensive school facilities and programs, more advantaged peers, responsible teachers, and more time-consuming homework assignments may be the characteristics of schools that increase the academic achievement of inner-city school voucher recipients. Additional analyses are recommended before definitive conclusions are drawn regarding what happens inside the black box of school voucher experiments.

School Choice and State Constitutions

State constitutional provisions dating back to the nineteenth century occupy an increasingly prominent place in the twenty-first century debate over private school voucher programs. In the public debate and in the courts, voucher opponents invoke state constitutional provisions, popularly known as Blaine Amendments, to support their contention that government may not operate a program that sends money to religious schools. This Note, written in 2000, argues that many (if not all) of these state constitutional provisions themselves violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Federal Constitution.

Who Chooses? Voucher and Interdistrict Choice Programs in Milwaukee

Choice in American education remains one of the more important and certainly more controversial issues in education reform movements. This article analyzes two types of choice programs located in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Numerous research issues are involved in the debates over educational choice. Two of the most important sets of issues are who chooses and why, and what are the effects on educational outcomes? This article is concerned with the first set of questions. The theme of the article is that who chooses is a function of the type and design of the choice program itself. Although there are some similarities in the characteristics of students and families in the Milwaukee Parental Choice program (a private-school voucher program) and the Chapter 220 program (an interdistrict public-school choice program), the contrasts are sharp and consistent across key variables. That result may not be welcomed by those seeking simple and decisive conclusions concerning some general theory of educational ...