School Choice & Charters

Privately Financed Vouchers Help Black Students, Two Studies Find

By Darcia Harris Bowman — September 06, 2000 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Black students who used privately financed vouchers to switch to private schools in four cities are showing steady academic gains over their public school peers, according to two studies released last week.

For More Information

Both reports on available online. Read the Harvard report, “Test-Score Effects of School Vouchers in Dayton, Ohio, New York City, and Washington D.C.: Evidence from Randomized Field Trials”; and the
Manhattan Institute report, “The Effect of School Choice: An Evaluation of the Charlotte Children’s Scholarship Fund.” (Both require Adobe’s Acrobat Reader.)

In New York City, Washington, and Dayton, Ohio, black students who received vouchers averaged 6 percentile points higher on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in mathematics and reading after two years than students who had applied for the scholarships but remained in public schools, a study by Harvard University researchers found.

A similar study conducted by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research found that the standardized-test scores of students who used such vouchers in Charlotte, N.C., increased by 6 percentile points after one year in math and 7 points in reading when compared with those of students who remained in public schools.

“It is now clear from several well-designed studies that school choice has significant academic benefits,” said Jay P. Greene, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of the Charlotte study. “Most sensible people are now recognizing that the evidence shows that it does.”

While black students in the Harvard study appeared to benefit from the voucher programs, students from other ethnic and racial groups showed no significant improvement over their counterparts in public schools.

Paul E. Peterson, a lead researcher on the study and the director of Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, said one possible reason for the disparity is the quality of the public schools that the black voucher recipients attended before switching to private schools.

In surveys conducted as part of the study, more black parents reported differences between their children’s public and private schools than parents of any other background, Mr. Peterson said.

“More black parents were saying the [private] schools were smaller, there were fewer discipline problems, more homework, and more communication with parents,” he said.

The Charlotte report did not break out results by race or ethnic group, Mr. Greene said, but the vast majority of students in that program also were African-American.

Kathleen Lyons, a spokeswoman for the National Education Association, which opposes vouchers, called the Harvard analysis “incomplete at best” and charged that it was “biased from the get-go.” She also accused the researchers of overstating the results.

Among other problems, she said, the authors failed to factor in differences that may exist between public school students who applied for vouchers and those who did not, or to account for relatively high dropout rates in the first year of some of the programs, all of which are financed at least in part by the Children’s Scholarship Fund of New York City. Mr. Peterson said the study does account for the dropout rates.

Methods and Message

Mr. Peterson was heavily criticized by voucher opponents in the mid-1990s for his analyses of publicly financed voucher programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee.

This time, however, the vouchers in each of the four programs studied were awarded by lottery, and researchers were able to compare students who won scholarships with those who did not but whose families wanted them.

“While one can always say the evidence is inconclusive, denying that there are academic benefits from school choice is beginning to sound like tobacco companies denying the link between smoking and cancer,” Mr. Greene said.

Some longtime skeptics say that while the methods of the latest studies are better, the message is still biased in favor of vouchers.

“One of the strengths of these studies seems to be the form of randomized selection they used,” said John F. Jennings, the director of the Center on Education Policy in Washington and a vocal proponent of traditional public education. “But they pushed the most favorable findings into the headlines and put the negative aspects in the footnotes.”

A bipartisan panel convened by Mr. Jennings’ organization last year concluded that no single study or group of studies available at the time provided definitive evidence that vouchers are an effective policy for improving education and raising student academic achievement. The group called for longer-term evaluations of voucher programs and more studies of broader scope and diversity.


Related Tags:

Events

Teaching Profession K-12 Essentials Forum New Insights Into the Teaching Profession
Join this free virtual event to get exclusive insights from Education Week's State of Teaching project.
Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and K-12 education jubs at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Mathematics K-12 Essentials Forum Helping Students Succeed in Math

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School Choice & Charters How School Choice Complicates District Bond Elections
Families who transfer children out of their residential districts may be less likely to vote in bond elections, researchers find.
3 min read
Photograph of a person in jeans walking on a sidewalk and passing a yellow and black voting place sign in the grass.
E+
School Choice & Charters What to Know About the Private School Choice Program Moving Through Congress
A new federal program would offer up to $5 billion in tax credits a year to fuel private school attendance nationwide.
10 min read
Penelope Koutoulas holds signs supporting school choice in a House committee meeting on education during a special session of the state legislature Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn.
Penelope Koutoulas holds signs supporting school choice in a House committee meeting on education during a special session of the state legislature Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. While a number of states, including Tennessee, have passed new programs funding private school tuition in recent years, the first major federal foray into private school choice is now making its way through Congress.
George Walker IV/AP
School Choice & Charters Then & Now The Trump Admin. Is Reviving This School Choice Option You've Never Heard Of
A little-known provision allows students to transfer out of schools deemed "persistently dangerous." Choice advocates say it's been underused.
8 min read
Image of two school buildings with cones, cameras.
Collage by Liz Yap for Education Week via Canva
School Choice & Charters Another Judge Rules Against Private School Choice. Here's Why
Utah's education savings accounts violate the state constitution by giving public funds to schools that exclude students, a judge ruled.
6 min read
Judge gavel on law books with statue of justice and court government background. concept of law, justice, legal.
iStock/Getty Images Plus