Learning: Inside Scoop
Do Vouchers Help Kids Learn?

Despite the hype, impartial studies show there's no evidence they do.

This year, the nine Supreme Court justices are scheduled to decide whether vouchers--public money going to private K-12 schools--violate the U.S. Constitution. Voucher supporters have for years been saying private schools can do a much better job than public schools. But the public has been skeptical, recently defeating voucher referenda in California and Michigan by overwhelming margins. Last August, the General Accounting Office (GAO) took a hard look at the evidence. Their conclusion: There's no valid evidence that vouchers help students learn.

Where are vouchers now in effect?
The program before the Supreme Court is in Cleveland, Ohio. As of June 2000, roughly 3,400 Cleveland students had vouchers. About 97 percent of them were going to religious schools. According to the GAO, "the maximum voucher amount ($2,250 for low-income students) established by the Ohio legislature at the beginning of the voucher program appears to have limited the program primarily to low-tuition religious schools." The use of tax money to support religious schools is one of the issues before the Supreme Court.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has a larger program with 7,600 children as of 2000. Florida has a small voucher program. Maine and Vermont have long-standing programs but only for students in rural districts where there is no age-appropriate public school, and the private schools must be secular.

What is the GAO?
The General Accounting Office is the investigative arm of Congress. It conducts a wide range of studies on public policy issues.

What did the GAO report say about vouchers and student learning?
The GAO reviewed studies of test scores for students from Cleveland and Milwaukee, comparing children in voucher programs with other children who were in the public schools. GAO found no evidence that children in voucher programs do better.

The researchers based their report on studies commissioned by state education departments in Ohio and Wisconsin. The GAO referred to these studies as "contracted evaluations."

The report says: "The contracted evaluations of voucher students' academic achievement in Cleveland and Milwaukee found little or no difference in voucher and public school students' performance."

What about researchers who claim that vouchers do work?
The GAO report said their studies did not meet the standards of good social science because they did not use adequate controls. To tell whether students benefit from vouchers, researchers must compare children who use vouchers with similar children in public schools. GAO found that pro-voucher researchers failed to do this.

Why are there conflicting claims about the effects of vouchers?
It is very difficult to conduct valid, objective research on "social engineering" experiments like vouchers because people can't be treated like guinea pigs--they can't be assigned randomly to one program or another, don't necessarily stay in the program once they start, and can't be forced to cooperate with researchers even if they do stay.

In Cleveland and Milwaukee, a high percentage of families did not return survey questionnaires. Were these families similar to those that did return questionnaires? Some children went to private schools on vouchers but then left. Could some of them have left because they did badly there?

Some students were offered vouchers but turned them down and stayed in the public schools. Others left the public schools when they learned they would not get vouchers. Perhaps these were children whose parents planned to put them in private schools all along.

In addition, researchers were unable to get some of the test score data they needed.

In all these situations, researchers had to make assumptions about the missing or possibly biased data. GAO concluded that the different study conclusions were due to different sets of assumptions that researchers made.

However, even the most pro-voucher researchers have limited their claims of success to certain groups of students at certain grade levels. After a much-hyped report on privately funded vouchers in three cities, one of the chief investigators took the highly unusual step of warning publicly that the person in charge of the study was going beyond the data to put a positive spin on vouchers.

What are some proven strategies for helping students learn?
There is solid evidence based on several well-controlled, long-term studies that children learn better in small classes with well-trained, experienced teachers. Small classes appear to be especially beneficial for low-income children, the same children whom voucher proponents claim to be trying to help.

What is NEA doing about vouchers?
NEA and its state affiliates are playing a leading role in opposing vouchers. At the national, state, and local levels, NEA lobbyists and members educate policy-makers and opinion leaders about the strengths of public educa-tion. And NEA General Counsel Robert Chanin will present the argument against vouchers to the Supreme Court (see "Rights Watch" box on page 18).

Most important, NEA works to build public confidence in the public schools by improving schools for all students.

--Alain Jehlen

For more: Read the General Accounting Office report at www.gao.gov/ew.items/d01914.pdf. The NEA Web site has additional information and links at www.nea.org/topics/privatization/vouchers.