Tes focus on...School vouchers schemes. Do they work?

Around the globe, schemes exist to give poorer families cash for private education. But do they work and is it something we should try here? Irena Barker finds out
6th December 2019, 12:05am
Do School Vouchers Work?

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Tes focus on...School vouchers schemes. Do they work?

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/tes-focus-onschool-vouchers-schemes-do-they-work

School voucher schemes are a big deal in the US, with 62 operating in 29 states. So much so, that a film, Miss Virginia, has just been released about the mother who campaigned for the country’s first federally funded programme in Washington, D C. Terrified of the prospect of her own son attending a local state school and slipping into a life of crime, as well as fearing for his safety, Virginia Walden Ford fought relentlessly for the scheme and is seen as a hero of parental empowerment.

Voucher schemes - which provide state funding for places in participating private schools - are, however, contentious. One concern is that they reduce investment in state schools. And some doubt claims that the schemes provide a route to academic excellence, college success and improved life chances for children from the poorest families.

So, do we know if voucher schemes actually work in the countries where they operate? And are they something that other countries should be attempting to mimic? As with many charged political issues, the answers will depend on who you ask and which research you read.

Patrick Wolf, a leading researcher in school choice programmes, says that the large quantity of research on the issue - coupled with political divisions over the schemes - often leads to individuals and organisations “cherry-picking” the evidence.

“It’s caveat emptor when it comes to reviews of the research on school vouchers. You have to be very careful about how the sample was done,” says Wolf, who is based at the University of Arkansas’s department of education reform.

Overall, there is more evidence of positive impacts than negative ones for voucher systems, although the more recent positive findings tend not to be related to improved academic test scores, Wolf says. Indeed, the impact on test scores - one of the government’s key measures of educational success - is mixed.

A 2016 meta-analysis (1) of rigorous worldwide studies found that, globally, vouchers have had a positive effect on participants’ maths scores after three or more years, and in reading after two or more years. Programmes outside the US - in Colombia and India - have found more positive effects than those inside the US, thereby pulling up the average.

Ticket to a better life?

However, the most recent studies present bleaker findings. In Louisiana, a 2019 working paper co-authored by Wolf (2) reveals that a school voucher system that gave poorer children from weaker public schools the chance to be educated in the private sector tended to lead to worse test results, particularly in maths.

The negative effect on participants’ test scores amounted to the loss of several months’ worth of learning over a four-year period. The voucher system, which operated on a lottery basis, did not select students according to ability. Anybody in an eligible school, and in the right income bracket, could apply.

Another study, of a scheme in Indiana (3), recorded similar negative effects on maths scores and a neutral impact on English scores. “They might find some more positive outcomes going forward, but their initial report was of negative test-score effects,” says Wolf.

What about the state schools that children leave behind? Across the research literature, the impact on test scores at public schools in areas operating voucher systems is “more consistently positive”, Wolf says.

“You find that 25 out of 27 statistical studies of the competitive effects of private school choice in the US concluded that the kids in public schools’ test scores go up if there’s more competitive pressure from choice,” he adds.

This may be down to public schools being more familiar with the tests and ways to prepare children for them, he concedes.

Why might the participants in the schemes be doing worse? Wolf suggests one factor may be the difficulty of finding enough good private schools willing to submit to government regulations. “It could just be that, with market-based reforms that are highly regulated, you don’t get the benefits of the market and you don’t get a robust supply of private institutions willing to subject themselves to those regulations,” he explains. “These highly regulated choice programmes might be experiencing supply problems that are reducing or limiting the positive effects.”

Wolf says he has discovered “substantial evidence” of lower-quality schools with declining enrolments participating in voucher schemes to “staunch the bleeding of fee-paying students”.

Despite the problems, however, delving deeper into the data reveals a more positive view of test outcomes: the most disadvantaged participants tend to do better. Wolf’s latest Louisiana study (4) found that the negative effects of the programme on test scores were less than half as large for African American students as for their non-African American peers. And a study by Wolf looking at an education voucher programme in Delhi, India (5), found “large positive impacts of voucher use on test scores in English”.

Yet, while test scores are important to politicians and for school accountability, they aren’t the be-all and end-all of education. Wolf and others have found some very positive outcomes in other areas.

What researchers describe as “attainment” - or how long young people stay in education and complete its various stages - can be boosted hugely by voucher schemes. Wolf’s own evaluation of the Washington, D C school voucher scheme (6) found “clear evidence” of a positive effect on high school graduation - a difference of 21 percentage points, he says.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which operates the oldest private school choice schemes in the US, researchers were able to track students past high school graduation all the way into college (7).

“Our most recent and final analysis found pretty consistent evidence that kids who participated in the voucher programme were 4 to 8 percentage points more likely to meet all of these attainment benchmarks, high school graduation, college enrolment, particularly in a four-year college,” says Wolf. “We even found evidence that the students were persisting in those colleges and completing their degrees at significantly higher rates if they participated in the voucher programmes.

“The private schools were not just giving them false hope that they could be successful in college - the students actually proved that they ended up being better at completing a college degree. That’s a big deal in terms of an outcome to change.”

Another study, also in Milwaukee, suggested that the voucher scheme could have the impact of lowering students’ likelihood of becoming involved in crime. Wolf says: “We can’t assume it’s a causal effect of private schooling reducing crime, but we can infer that it is.

“We did find pretty clear evidence that students who participated in the Milwaukee parental choice programme were somewhat less likely to be accused or convicted of a variety of crimes as young adults in their mid twenties, especially property crimes. Is it because maybe they had parents with stronger values or a home life that emphasised personal responsibility more that could be the difference? Or it could be that the private schools they were in reinforced those values more strongly and that led to more positive habits.”

So, how would Wolf advise policymakers thinking of bringing in or expanding a private school voucher programme? It has the scope to be a “liberating” reform, he says, because it introduces a market-based accountability system in place of a more rigid and hierarchical system: “It can be a win for public school officials, as well as families and schools, if it leads to a more dynamic and less constrained K-12 [kindergarten to 12th grade] educational system.”

However, there are plenty of pitfalls, too. “Don’t presume that just because government is offering subsidies for private school tuition that all private schools will participate,” he stresses. “You basically have to offer the private schools an arrangement that’s attractive to them and doesn’t have a lot of scary components.”

And finally, Wolf says you should not underappreciate the power of parents in this equation. “Like any good consumer, they want accurate and accessible information,” he explains. “They don’t have a ton of time to gather that information.

“You want to assist parents in making choices but you don’t want to make the choices for them. Don’t just throw the parents into the lake and tell them to swim - they are going to need some support and assistance in that process.”

Irena Barker is an education writer. She tweets at @irenabarker

This article originally appeared in the 6 December 2019 issue under the headline “Tes focus on…School vouchers”

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