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A new study of Milwaukee schools finds that competition generated by vouchers does not lead to higher student test scores. Milwaukee has the longest-running voucher plan in the nation.
The findings contradict claims that the availability of vouchers pushes public schools to compete for students, thus improving student performance in low-income, urban areas. The lack of consistent academic improvement in Milwaukee’s public schools even after a proliferation of alternative options for students is profiled in “Vouchers and Public School Performance,” published Wednesday (October 3, 2007) by the Economic Policy Institute, an independent, non-profit, non-partisan think tank.
The book examines public elementary school performance through extensive data analysis – including test scores in language and math – over nearly a decade as the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program introduced vouchers on a widening scale.
The voucher program expansion to religious schools was implemented in 1998, after which there was a slight rise in public school performance for two years. Researchers found little or no further improvement in later years, even as competition from private and eventually charter schools increased substantially.
In fact, the study notes Milwaukee has been closing neighborhood schools because of declining enrollment and continued poor scores, but this has not had an observable effect on overall student performance.
“Schools are not like the marketplace: competition doesn’t automatically make things better,” said Martin Carnoy of Stanford University, who wrote the book with several other authors including John Witte, professor in the Department of Political Science and School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
.“The evidence does not support advocates’ claims that voucher schools raise academic achievement,” Carnoy continued. “Just a one-time uptick in scores or grades is not enough to make the case.”
Among the major findings:
“This study of the nation’s largest voucher program adds to a complex and very important debate,” Witte said. “Do private school vouchers ultimately have a positive effect on public schools? Our general answer is that it’s too difficult to tell, but it certainly isn’t an obvious ‘yes.’”
Posted October 3, 2007