Educational Vouchers: A Review of the Research   by Alex Molnar   Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation School of Education University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee PO Box 413 Milwaukee WI 53201 414-229-2716   October, 1999     CERAI-99-21

Educational Vouchers: A Review of the Research  This document combines excerpts from two reports: "Smaller Classes -- Not Vouchers -- Increase Student Achievement" (Harrisburg, Pa.: Keystone Research Center, March 1998); and "Smaller Classes and Educational Vouchers: A Research Update" (Harrisburg, Pa.: Keystone Research Center, June 1999). Both documents are available on the website of the Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation at http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CERAI

Table of Contents - Exercept 1 Historical Background Educational Choice Enters the Mainstream The Battle Over Vouchers Today The Milwaukee Parental Choice Voucher Program The Debate Over the Achievement Effect of the Milwaukee Voucher Program Box 3: Public vs. Private Schools Why Different Researchers Reach Different Conclusions The Witte Evaluations Box 4: Sorting through the Conflicting Voucher Results The Greene, Peterson, and Du Evaluation Box 5: When are Significant Results Not So Significant? The Rouse Evaluation Milwaukee’s Private Voucher Program -- PAVE Box 6 - A Case Example of the Relative Cost and Performance of Public and Private Schools The Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program (CSTP) Vouchers, Values, and Educational Equity Box 7: Does Money Matter? School Spending and School Outcomes References

Table of Contents - Exercept 2 The Argument Over Vouchers The Milwaukee Parental Choice Voucher Program The Achievement Effects of the Milwaukee Voucher Program The Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program (CSTP) Official Evaluation Results for CSTP Private Voucher Programs Private School Vouchers (Con't) Vouchers and Educational Equity References

Box 7: Does Money Matter? School Spending and School Outcomes Debates about vouchers and class size both touch on a controversial recent debate about whether higher spending improves performance in schools. The holy grail for voucher advocates is improved performance without spending more money. Evidence that money doesn’t matter points them to the public education bureaucracy as the problem and to vouchers as a way of achieving better outcomes without necessarily spending more in the long run. Smaller class size, by contrast, would cost more money. The question is whether the performance improvement that results is worth the cost. University of Rochester Professor Eric Hanushek launched the debate about whether money matters by claiming, based on an extensive analysis of the literature, that "there is no strong or systematic relationship between school expenditures and student performance."82 The studies Hanushek analyzed attempt to determine the relationship between resource inputs, especially money, and school outcomes. Hanushek’s conclusion has been challenged by Hedges, Laine and Greenwald (University of Chicago) based on a meta-analysis of the same studies as Hanushek.83Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald find that there is a systematic and educationally important relationship between resources and student achievement. The studies on which both Hanushek and Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald rely have been criticized for being poorly designed, based on non-representative samples, and focused on funding-related characteristics instead of funding as such.84 Two other recent strands of literature shed light on the "money matters" debate. While Hanushek’s research takes off from the premise that spending on public education has increased rapidly but test scores have not, as noted above, Richard Rothstein’s work shows that spending on public education has increased less quickly than generally believed.85 Moreover, Rothstein estimates that special education spending accounted for 38 percent of net new K-12 spending from 1967 to 1991. The ability of voucher schools in Milwaukee to reject students with exceptional educational needs not only enables the private schools to focus on regular education; it also requires the Milwaukee Public Schools to spend a higher share of funds on special education. Bruce Biddle (University of Missouri) takes up the question of money in two ways.86He uses child poverty data and data on the educational spending of states to study the effects of these two factors on 8th grade math performance. He finds that school funding and child poverty account for 55 percent of the variation in average math achievement among states. Biddle’s findings are in line with results of an earlier study by Ronald Ferguson.87Using data from 1986-1990 on 90 percent of the school districts in Texas, Ferguson found that average class size, teacher experience, and the academic ability of teachers accounted for between one quarter and one third of the variation in the reading achievement levels of Texas school districts. He also found that smaller class size and more qualified teachers were more likely to be found in districts that had higher levels of funding. In a more recent study of fourth and eighth grade math achievement, Harold Wenglinsky (Educational Testing Service) considered how money matters when applied to the funding of school districts.88 He found that school districts with more students from the least affluent backgrounds have the largest class sizes and are, therefore, least able to raise student achievement. These districts also have the least to spend on central administration. In his analysis, under-funded central administrations ordinarily spend less money on reducing class size and more money on projects with little academic payoff. Wenglinsky’s conclusion that a low pupil-teacher ratio creates a positive classroom social environment and increases math achievement affirms what many parents already appear to know. According to David Figlio and Joe Stone, the higher the pubic school student-teacher ratio in an area, the more likely that parents will send their children to private schools (especially private non-religious schools). Conversely, the higher the private school student-teacher ratio, the more likely parents are to send their children to public schools.89This finding suggests much of the debate over the relative merits of public vs. private schools per se may be beside the point. Continue with the Next Section