Vouching for Achievement A new study shows higher test scores for students using vouchers.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/vouching-for-achievement-1464300831?mod=trending_now_3
Six decades after Milton Friedman proposed school vouchers, the Nobel Prize-winning economist is winning the argument on the policy results if not always on the politics.
Today 26 states and the District of Columbia have some private school choice program, and the trend is for more: Half of the programs have been established in the past five years. That hasn’t stopped opponents from arguing there’s no proof vouchers help students learn. But a new study from the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas shows otherwise.
The study’s most important news is that voucher students show “statistically significant” improvement in math and reading test scores. The researchers found that vouchers on average increase the reading scores of students who get them by about 0.27 standard deviations and their math scores by about 0.15 standard deviations. In laymen’s terms, this means that on average voucher students enjoy the equivalent of several months of additional learning compared to non-voucher students.
The researchers looked at 19 studies covering 11 voucher programs from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Delhi, India. The authors chose the 19 because they met the criteria for the “gold standard” of program evaluation, with both a “treatment group” (the voucher kids) and a “control group” (the non-voucher kids). “When you do the math, students achieve more when they have access to private school choice,” says Patrick J. Wolf, who conducted the study with M. Danish Shakeel and Kaitlin P. Anderson. CONTINUE AT SITE
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