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
October 1999
CERAI-99-21
Alex Molnar
Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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
According to George Washington University Professor Jeffrey Henig, with free-market arguments for private school vouchers meeting with no success, the administration of President Reagan shifted the discussion to public school choice.15This new emphasis broadened support for school "choice," which many now saw as a strategy to reform rather than to dismantle the public school system. Furthermore, supporters often associated choice with educational excellence and racial equity through its link to the popular magnet school concept. Many school districts had established magnet schools to promote school integration and as an alternative to court-ordered busing. Magnet schools offered a diverse array of innovative curricula to attract voluntary transfers to integrated schools. By shifting the focus from private school vouchers to public school choice, President Reagan successfully separated educational choice from its racist and sectarian roots.16
Over the next eight years, beginning with Minnesota in 1988, 14 states enacted public school choice laws.17 These laws allowed students to choose to attend any public school in the state that had room for them.
The idea of private school vouchers took the national stage again during the presidency of George Bush. Between 1990 and 1992, President Bush sent Vice President Dan Quayle to Oregon to speak on behalf of a voucher ballot initiative there. Bush expressed strong (and well-publicized) support for Wisconsin’s 1990 private school voucher law, included "parental choice" in his 1991 "America 2000" reform initiative, and, in 1992, proposed a voucher plan he called a "G.I. Bill for Children."18 Bush’s Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton, took over the Reagan administration’s "public school choice" position during the 1992 presidential campaign.
At the state level, private school vouchers have been vigorously debated for 20 years. Since 1978, four states have held referenda on voucher plans: Michigan (1978), Oregon (1990), Colorado (1992) and California (1993). Each of these efforts failed by an approximately 2-to-1 margin. California voters also rejected "regulated" voucher plans in 1980 and 1982 ballot initiatives.19
In 1993, Puerto Rico passed legislation that provided vouchers worth $1,500 per child that low-income families could use to send their children to any school, public or private (including religious schools that would accept them). The Puerto Rico Supreme Court struck down the private school portion of the bill in 1994.
In 1995 and 1996, voucher legislation was introduced in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. In addition, constitutional amendments were proposed in Michigan and Missouri to permit the creation of voucher plans. Despite repeated setbacks, voucher legislation continues to be introduced in state legislatures and, since 1994, at the federal level.
Proponents of vouchers today base their position on three widely held views about public education: that educational outcomes have deteriorated, that American public education costs have accelerated unreasonably, and that the public schools cannot reform themselves because of bureaucratic and political constraints.
Notwithstanding the conventional wisdom, educational outcomes have actually improved. Between the 1970s and 1990, according to a 1994 RAND study, reading and math scores rose significantly for Hispanics and African-Americans.20
The best available evidence also shows that resources for regular classrooms at public schools have increased only modestly. In a survey of nine school districts, Richard Rothstein found that real spending for regular education climbed by only 28 percent from 1967 to 1991.21 In Los Angeles, real per-pupil spending on regular education declined 3.5 percent over the same period. As Rothstein points out, if this decline typifies developments in urban areas generally, that may help explain frustration with academic outcomes.
Of course, national statistics about gradually improving performance and the stagnation of funds to urban school districts are of little comfort to parents convinced that their own children will not get the lift they need from the local public school. Parents who want better schools for their kids now have been a receptive audience for the third widely held view behind support for vouchers today: that public schools are incapable of reforming themselves because of bureaucratic and political constraints. This argument gained intellectual legitimacy with the publication of Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools by John Chubb and Terry Moe, in 1990.22In their book, Chubb and Moe argue that the failure to improve school performance, despite a series of reforms instituted after the publication of A Nation at Risk, plus evidence of the superior performance of private schools, demonstrate the need for vouchers.23(For a summary of the public vs. private school literature, see Box 3.)
The steep decline in the wages of male minority workers since the late 1970s has increased the urgency of demands to improve urban school quality and made many African-Americans receptive to vouchers. In Pennsylvania since 1979, with manufacturing jobs declining and non-professional employment stagnating in high-wage "bureaucratic" service industries (e.g., utilities, the telephone industry, the public sector), the median wage of African-American male workers plummeted by $3.59, from $12.72 in 1979 to $9.13 in 1996 in inflation-adjusted dollars.24
Many proponents of private school vouchers, such as Democratic Wisconsin Assembly member Annette "Polly" Williams, author of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program legislation, have linked vouchers to their desire to empower poor families and raise the academic achievement of poor children. They argue that vouchers will improve achievement levels by forcing the public schools to compete in an educational marketplace in which poor parents hold the power of the purse.
Continue with the Next Section The Milwaukee Parental Choice Voucher Program
