The longer students keep vouchers, the better their results

Results in Louisiana and Indiana’s voucher programs took a step in the right direction this week, with the release of one study and the leak of another.

Voucher critics made the two large statewide school choice programs into targets over the past year. Studies looking at just a few years’ worth of data found students fell behind their public-school peers on reading and math tests after accepting a voucher to attend a private school.

The drip-drop of negative findings countered what had been a steady stream of studies showing private school choice programs didn’t harm — and sometimes helped — student test score gains. A gathering narrative argued vouchers harm student achievement.

The new Indiana and Louisiana results reflect students’ progress over a longer time period. And they call that narrative into question.

They show voucher students who remained in private schools for a few years eventually caught up to their private school peers. Some even posted achievement gains over time.

This highlights a consistent trend in other voucher studies, including a recent re-examination of voucher data from Washington D.C. When students leave public schools to accept private school scholarships, they tend to lose ground initially. Over time, their test scores get better as they adjust to new schools.

Schools take the time to adjust to new students, too. Private schools in much of Louisiana and Indiana had to figure out how to serve an influx of low-income and working-class students who couldn’t previously afford tuition. And sometimes schools have to adjust to new standards, tests or regulations that come with scholarship programs.

The new results have drawn predictable reactions from teachers unions and school choice advocacy groups. They might not bring a clear-cut victory for either side of the debate. But they lend fresh credence to arguments from people like Lousiana School Superintendent John White, who argued partisans should give vouchers time to work before jumping to conclusions about their academic impact.

 New years of data

Indiana’s low-income voucher students see positive outcomes in reading and no difference in math after four years, according to updated findings that still have not yet been formally published. They were first divulged on public radio by Professors Mark Berends and Joseph Waddington and later released by Chalkbeat.

As with previous research, the authors found a decline in student performance in the first year. But they also found as years go by, student achievement in private schools begins to climb.

“The longer that a student is enrolled in a private school receiving a voucher, their achievement begins to turn positive in magnitude — to the degree that they’re making up ground that they initially lost in their first couple of years in private school,” Waddington stated in an interview with NPR.

The new study on Louisiana’s voucher program, by Jonathan Mills and Patrick Wolf, also found students lost significant academic ground their first year after accepting a scholarship.

“The drop in achievement in the first year was quite dramatic,” said Wolf, a University of Arkansas professor, at an Urban Institute event to release the study. By year three, however, they matched their peers in both reading and math.

Results were not uniform for all Louisiana students. Those who were significantly behind their peers before applying for the voucher saw significant achievement growth in reading. Students enrolling in younger grades saw significant declines in math.

Doug Harris, Director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, which published the study, noted that critics and supporters alike will interpret the results however they want. “But for us in the middle,” he said at the Urban Institute, “we need to know how these programs work and how they impact student achievement.”

Harris said he found the achievement growth in Indiana and Louisiana encouraging and noted that systemic effects, like the impact of vouchers or charter schools, take time to observe accurately.

Why the initial decline?

Wolf hypothesized the initial negative results, followed by steady annual growth, could be due to private schools slowly adapting to the new regulations or their new students.

Beth Blaufuss, president of Archbishop Carroll High School in New Orleans, believed initial academic declines occured because private schools spent more time in the first year acclimating newly enrolled disadvantaged students to their cultures so they could focus more on academics in the years that followed.

The improvements in both studies suggest the rush to condemn vouchers based on early results was premature.

White, the Louisiana state superintendent, had long promised positive academic trends in his state’s voucher program. “I see it [the voucher] as a potential means of making every high-quality school possible available to low-income youth,” he said at the Urban Institute.

Recognizing that there are great public and private schools, White remained unconvinced that either sector would ever radically outperform the other. With that in mind, he asked: “What kind of rules, incentives do we need so every high-quality school is available to low-income and disadvantaged kids?”

That’s a question worth asking. Anti-voucher pundits didn’t bring us closer to answer when they jumped to conclusions based on initial data.

Background

Indiana’s voucher program, founded in 2011, served more than 34,000 students last year. The program is available for students living in households earning up to 150 percent of the Free and Reduced Price Lunch program eligibility ($67,433 for a family of four in 2016-17), as well as students with special needs living in households earning less than $89,910 for a family of four.

Louisiana’s voucher program, founded in 2008 and expanded statewide in 2012, served around 7,000 students last year. The program is available for students assigned to C, D or F rated public schools who also live in households earning no more than 250 percent of the Federal poverty level ($60,750 for a family of four in 2016-17).


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BY Patrick R. Gibbons

Patrick Gibbons is public affairs manager at Step Up for Students and a research fellow for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. A former teacher, he lived in Las Vegas, Nev., for five years, where he worked as an education writer and researcher. He can be reached at (813) 498.1991 or emailed at pgibbons@stepupforstudents.org. Follow Patrick on Twitter: at @PatrickRGibbons and @redefinEDonline.