News in Brief: A Washington Roundup

It's too soon to draw sweeping conclusions about the academic impact of privately financed programs that provide vouchers to help needy families send their children to private schools, the General Accounting Office concludes in a recent report.

The report by Congress' investigative arm, "School Vouchers: Characteristics of Privately Funded Programs," focuses on 78 such programs operating around the country that together serve 46,000 students and provide $60 million in tuition assistance. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the ranking minority member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, requested the study.

GAO investigators say they could find only three studies—focusing on scholarship programs in Dayton, Ohio; New York City; and the District of Columbia—that met the agency's standards for scholarly rigor. Key strengths and limitations of those previously publicized studies, which have been the subject of sharp debate among education researchers, are listed in the report. ( "Voucher Plans' Test Data Yield Puzzling Trends," ...