Research and Articles On the Impact of Scholarships and Vouchers on Children, Families and Communities in Our Nation and in Our World.

The Collins Center For Public Policy issued an updated report this year that showed that the program has saved taxpayers over $140 million in its first three years. These savings can be used to increase per pupil spending in the public schools—which in fact went up 16% in that three year period.

How Members of Congress Practice School Choice
The Heritage Foundation
Backgrounder #1684
Krista Kafer and Jonathan Butcher
September 3, 2003

In 2003, The Heritage Foundation conducted a survey of Members of Congress on school choice. Of those who responded to the survey, 41 percent of U.S. Representatives and 46 percent of U.S. Senators send or have sent at least one of their children to a private school. In the general population, only about 10 percent of students attend private schools. Heritage Foundation surveys of Congress conducted in 2001 and 2000 yielded similar results.

School Choice Facts
The Institute for Justice
September 2003

The Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm that has litigated all over the country in defense of school choice, assembled a list of statistics and legal briefs that amplify the need for more choice in Washington, D.C.

What Does a Voucher Buy? A Look at the Cost of Private Schools
David Salisbury
Cato Institute
Policy Analysis No. 486
August 28, 2003

This study looked at the cost of private schools in several areas around the country, including New Orleans, Houston, Washington, D.C. The researcher explains what amount of voucher award would be most beneficial to students and how these awards would save money for the areas reviewed because the voucher amounts are significantly lower than the public school per pupil cost.

When schools compete: The Effects of Vouchers on Florida Public School Achievement
Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters
Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute
Education Working Paper No. 2
August 2003

This study, by Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Jay P. Greene, Ph.D., and Research Associate Marcus A. Winters, analyzes the effect of Florida's A+ Program on public schools. Proponents of school vouchers have long argued that competition for students and the funding they generate will give public schools powerful incentives to improve. This study shows that schools in direct competition with vouchers, or threatened by the prospect of vouchers, are making educational gains greater than those of other low-performing schools that are not facing voucher competition.

No Child Left Behind Mandates School Choice: Colorado's First Year
Independence Institute
Pamela Benigno
June 2003

This Issue Paper reviews the methods Colorado used to notify parents of their educational options. Students attending schools on the "School Improvement" list had the option to transfer to a different school, and the state's responsibility was to communicate this option in a "neutral" way--neither discouraging nor encouraging a particular decision from parents. The study found that many districts and schools did not make parents aware of their options in an unbiased manner.

Vouchers for Special Education Students: An Evaluation of Florida's McKay Scholarship Program
Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster
Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute
Civic Report
No. 38
June 2003

In this first empirical analysis of the nation's second largest school voucher program, Greene and Forster find that the McKay Scholarship Program is succeeding by many measures at delivering better services to families of disabled students. In their surveys, parents report that in McKay-sponsored private schools their children were better treated, received more services and had smaller class sizes, achieved better educational performance and better behavior, and that they were happier overall - all by substantially higher levels than with their traditional public school. Over 70% of families report being able to obtain this education at or within $1,000 above the value of the voucher.

  True Private Choice: A Practical Guide to School Choice after Zelman v. Simmons-Harris
Marie Gryphon Cato Institute
Policy Analysis
No. 466 February 4, 2003

Gryphon's analysis clarifies the Constitutional requirements the Supreme Court set out in the recent school choice case, including that the program be secular and educational in purpose, and that if a religious option is included there must be non-religious alternatives. Gryphon then provides advocates with a strategy for advancing an expanded school choice policy within those bounds, and discusses the test cases probing the conflict over school choice between the First Amendment and more restrictive state constitutions.

Educational Vouchers and Tax Credits: A State-by-State Summary of Current Programs
Marya DeGrow
The Independence Institute
December 18, 2002

DeGrow's paper identifies the scope and breadth of the tax credit and voucher systems used by 11 states to provide varying degrees of school choice for families of K-12 aged children.

The Need for Educational Freedom in the Nation's Capital
Casey Lartigue
Cato Institute
Policy Analysis
No. 461
December 10, 2002

Lartigue's historical analysis details the chronic problems of Washington DC's top-funded, under-performing public schools. He argues that blaming the usual scapegoats like insufficient funding and personal failures of certain school leaders is a decades-old distraction that will only shield a deeply troubled system from meaningful reform. Instead, he urges that the system be enervated with new leadership, parent participation and entrepreneurship.

Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment
The American Economic Review
Joshua Angrist, Eric Bettinger, Erik Bloom, Elizabeth King, and Michael Kremer
December 2002

  In Colombia, a lottery is used to award scholarships for students to attend private secondary schools. After three years, the students using the vouchers were nearly 10 percentage points more likely to have finished 8th grade. The study also found that these students "were less likely to marry or cohabit as teenagers."

Rising to the Challenge: The Effect of School Choice on Public Schools in Milwaukee and San Antonio
Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster
Manhattan Institute
Civic Bulletin
No. 27
October 2002The study focuses on the impact of school choice on the academic achievement of public school students in Milwaukee and San Antonio. After controlling for demographic characteristics such as race and income level and differences in expenditures, the authors found increased academic achievement in public schools that had been exposed to competition from private school scholarship programs and charter schools. What Next for School Vouchers
Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance
Conference proceedings and presentation of papers
October 17-18, 2002

This website includes presentations by numerous school voucher leaders on various fronts of the voucher wars, including Constitutional status, the historical and international status of government and religious schools, school choice in urban areas, and vouchers' political future.

School Vouchers: Characteristics of Privately Funded Programs
U.S. General Accounting Office
GAO--02--752
September 2002The GAO examined research findings regarding 78 privately funded voucher programs. Several studies showed that families using vouchers were more satisfied with their children's new schools with regard to such factors as academics and safety. Parents using privately funded vouchers reported that their children's schools communicated with them more frequently and had a more positive environment than did the public schools. Other studies documented the academic gains of African-American students who had received vouchers.

The Impact of School Choice on Racial Integration in Milwaukee Public Schools
Howard Fuller and Deborah Greiveldinger
American Education Reform Council
August 2002

When Milwaukee added religious schools to the range of choices in its voucher program, opponents contended the change would increase racial segregation. This study presents evidence that racial integration is actually higher among Milwaukee's religious choice schools, and furthermore that choice schools are more integrated than traditional public schools overall. However, older public school choice programs which were created primarily for the purpose of integration have harmed African-American students and benefited whites.

The Unintended Benefits of Private School Choice
Thomas Nechyba, Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation
June 2002
see also Thomas Nechyba, School Finance, Spatial Income Segregation, and the Nature of Communities
Duke University and National Bureau of Economic ResearchResearch conducted in 2002 by Duke University professor Thomas Nechyba suggests that a citywide voucher program could alleviate neighborhood income segregation by attracting higher-income families to poorer areas. Their relocation to low-income neighborhoods would increase property values and improve the tax base, thereby generating greater revenues for the public schools. Thus, benefits flow not only to students using vouchers, but also to students who remain in the public-school system.

The Effects of Town Tuitioning in Vermont and Maine
Christopher Hammons, Ph.D.
Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation
2002A 2002 analysis of the voucher programs in Maine and Vermont (the oldest in the nation) found that choice increases productivity. In these states, students in towns without public schools may attend private schools at public expense. Schools located in areas where there was high competition in attracting students (and their per-pupil funding) had a strong incentive to improve performance. Such schools exhibited higher levels of achievement than did those in areas with less competition.

Learning for Success: What Americans Can Learn From School Choice in Canada
William Robinson and Claudia Hepburn
School Choice Issues in Depth
Vol. 1, Issue 2

The report analyzes the benefits of school choice policies in Canada showing that public schools improve under competitive innovation, private schools are accountable to provincial curriculum and assessment standards yet "maintain independence with school choice," all schools provide higher quality education, and Canadians broadly approve of the system. The report specifically credits broader access to choice as a cause of the higher average achievement levels among disadvantaged students.

School Choice in New York After Three Years: An Evaluation of the School Choice Scholarship Program Final Report
Daniel Mayer, Paul Peterson, Christina Clark Tuttle, and William Howell
Harvard University, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and University of Wisconsin
February 2002According to research conducted by Harvard University professor Paul Peterson, the academic achievement of low-income African-American students who received scholarships offered by the School Choice Scholarships Foundation (SCSF) rose significantly.

School Choice Works! The Case of Sweden
Fredrik Bergstrom and F. Mikael Sandstrom
School Choice Issues in Thought, Vol. 1, Issue 1
January 2002The authors, Swedish PhD's in economics, present Sweden's school reform story from before the early 90's with nationally-controlled funding and curriculum, to a localized, parental choice-driven system in which citizens have the opportunity to create or send their children to equally-funded, fast-growing independent schools. Independent schools must be approved by the national government (sometimes over local objections), may not charge tuition or discriminate for admissions on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion, and must meet the same standards and "targets" as the public schools. The study also considers the effects of competition on traditional "municipal" schools and special needs students.

How School Choice Helps the Milwaukee Public Schools
John Gardner
American Education Reform Council
January 2002

John Gardner, former member of the Milwaukee School Board, reviews the initial arguments against the institution of school choice in Milwaukee in the 90's -- that it would cause a decline in students, funds and academic performance and shows how the opposite actually resulted. Budgets have increased, as have student populations and performance. Gardner tracks how, when dollars follow students, schools are empowered to make critical staff and budget decisions in response to immediate need. As a result, he discusses how schools have increased merit-based teacher selection and provided more educational services to disadvantaged areas.

The Education Gap
William G. Howell and Paul E. Peterson
The Brookings Institution
2002

This book reviews "data from randomized field trials conducted in New York City; Dayton, OH; and Washington, DC." The authors also include information from a voucher program in the San Antonio school district and "a randomized field trial evaluation of a program that offered vouchers to 40,000 low-income families nationwide." The findings were consistent: on average, participating students scored "three percentile points higher than their public school peers in Year I, six percentile points higher in Year II, and seven points higher in Year III."

The Arizona Scholarship Tax Credit: Giving Parents Choices, Saving Taxpayers Money
Carrie Lips and Jennifer Jacoby
Cato Institute
Policy Analysis
No. 414
September 12, 2001

This paper reviews the results of Arizona's then-four year old $500 tax credit for organizations that donate to K-12 tuition scholarship programs. Through surveys of schools and analysis of state revenue figures, the authors found that in its first three years, over $32 million in donations provided 19,000 scholarships, mostly to needy students. Because the tuition funds raised by the tax credit offset moneys that would otherwise come from the state education budget, the program was revenue neutral.

Lessons From Maine: Education Vouchers for Students Since 1873
Frank Heller
Cato Institute
Briefing Paper No. 66
September 10, 2001

The state of Maine's unique school choice program provides funds to towns which do not have traditional public schools to sponsor their local children to attend another approved public or private school. In 1999, this program enabled over 35,000 Maine children to attend a school of choice at a cost of "20 percent less than Maine's average per pupil expenditure for public education." This paper documents the history of the program and offers recommendations for expanding school choice opportunities to families both in Maine and nationwide.

Lessons From Vermont: 132-Year-Old Voucher Program Rebuts Critics
Libby Sternberg
Cato Institute
Briefing Paper No. 67
September 10, 2001

The author discusses Vermont's voucher program, which paid tuition to public and private schools for over 6,500 children in grades K-12 in 1998-99. The history of Vermont's program refutes conventional attacks on vouchers that they "skim" the best students or "drain" funds from public schools.

Results of a School Voucher Experiment: The Case of Washington, D.C., After Two Years
Patrick J. Wolf, Paul E. Peterson, and Martin R. West
prepared for annual meeting of the American Political Science Association
San Francisco, California

August 30 - September 2, 2001The study compares the academic experience of students using privately funded vouchers through the Washington Scholarship Fund with that of similar students in a control group who remained in public schools. The findings on academic and social indicators were significant: Parental satisfaction was higher for parents of scholarship students, and African-American students using the vouchers scored 9 percentile points higher on national math and reading achievement tests than their peers in public schools.

Evaluation of the Cleveland Scholarship Program
Kim Metcalf, Indiana University
September 2001

This evaluation studied three groups of students entering kindergarten in 1998: those who applied for and received scholarships; those who applied for but did not receive scholarships; and those who did not apply for scholarships. The study found that the students using the vouchers performed "at significantly higher levels than other students when they entered first grade."

Vouchers in Charlotte
Jay Greene
Education Next
Summer 2001

This study reviewed the achievement gains in math and science from students participating in a private scholarship program in Charlotte, NC. Author and researcher Jay Greene found that after one year students in the program scored 5.9 percentile points higher on the math section of the ITBS and 6.5 percentile points higher on the reading section of the test.

Rhetoric Versus Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools
Brian P. Gill, P. Michael Timpane, Karen E. Ross, and Dominic J. Brewer
RAND Corporation
RB--8018--EDU, 2001The 2001 RAND Corporation review of existing literature on voucher and charter programs found that the voucher programs produced positive or neutral achievement benefits, resulted in higher parental satisfaction, and hold the potential for increases in school integration. Because choice programs have been small and limited, RAND researchers caution against using them to make predictions about the impact of large programs. Rather, they suggest, "A program of vigorous research and experimentation is called for, but not one confined to choice programs. Better information on the performance of conventional public schools and alternative reform models is needed as well."

Fiscal Analysis of a $500 Federal Education Tax Credit to Help Millions, Save Billions
Darcy Ann Olsen, Carrie Lips, and Dan Lips
Cato Institute
Policy Analysis No. 398
May 1, 2001In this analysis, researchers have assumed that every dollar spent on the tax credit would result in a direct revenue loss to the federal government. At the state level, however, use of the tax credit could result in tremendous savings. Cato analysts say that by reducing the cost of private schooling, the credit would encourage some parents to transfer their children from public to private schools. "As students transfer, state governments have fewer pupils to educate and can reduce expenditures accordingly."

An Evaluation of the Children's Scholarship Fund
Paul Peterson and David Campbell
Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance
May 2001

The authors use the wide-based, lottery-selected population of Children's Scholarship Fund beneficiaries to study the effects of attending private schools. Among the most clear results were that parents of children in private schools are substantially more satisfied with their child's school and feel there are fewer problems in their schools, and that private schools generally offer smaller classes. The large, randomized sample lends credibility to their assessment.

Lies and Distortions: The Campaign Against School Vouchers
Howard Fuller and Kaleem Caire
Marquette University Institute for the Transformation of Learning Black Alliance for Educational Options
April 2001

This report argues that informed, rational debate over vouchers is undermined by the deceptive methods of school voucher opponents. Fuller and Caire present evidence that a variety of organizations intentionally mislead the public about school vouchers through a "Big Lie" strategy. The media has compounded the misunderstandings by reporting inaccurate information and broadcasting anti-choice advocates' attacks on "straw men" or un-real policies, resulting in a "contaminated discussion." The report encourages the media to reveal this campaign of deception and help the public weigh the true opportunities and potential costs of vouchers.

A Reply to "Critique of 'An Evaluation of the Florida A-Plus Accountability and School Choice Program'" by Gregory Camilli and Katrina Bulkley
Jay P. Greene
The Manhattan Institute
March 5, 2001

In this short piece, Greene refutes the inaccuracies in Camilli and Bulkley's "Critique" of his earlier study on Florida's choice program. Greene points out how they misrepresented his claims to artificially weaken his argument, and then, among other distortions, obscured the effects of the program by using biased samples and diluted units of measurement. According to Greene, "the Camilli and Bulkley re-analysis is almost a textbook for how to do a hatchet job on positive results that one wishes to make go away."

An Evaluation of the Florida A-Plus Accountability and School Choice Program
Jay P. Greene, Ph.D.
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
February 2001 A 2001 analysis of the Florida A+ program, conducted by Jay P. Greene of the Manhattan Institute, found that vouchers provided a strong incentive for schools to improve. In Florida, schools receive grades ranging from "A" to "F," based on the proportion of students who pass the state's proficiency tests. Students who attend schools that receive a failing grade twice within a four-year period can receive a voucher to attend another public or private school of choice. Greene found that schools receiving an "F" improved when they were faced with the prospect of vouchers.

The Effects of School Vouchers on Student Achievement: A Response to Critics
William G. Howell, Patrick J. Wolf, Paul E. Peterson and David E. Campbell
Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance

The authors address criticism of their original research methodology by showing, among other issues, how they controlled for differences and changes in the studied population; found minimal differences in results when family background was not controlled for; contrasted choosers with non-choosers to factor-out the effects of self-selection; focused on the school as the accurate level of analysis, not the student. Additionally, the authors included several cities in their study while most critics only looked at one city, or just certain grades within one city. The authors thus uphold their conclusion that the voucher programs they tested indicate solid improvement for African Americans but not other groups. Yet they conclude on a cautionary note, urging more testing of more ethnic groups over a larger sample size and time.

An Evaluation of the BASIC Fund Scholarship Program in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
Paul Peterson, David Campbell, Martin West
Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance
January 2001

This survey compared the attitudes of parents who exercised school choice through the BASIC program with other local and national samples of low-income families. Families receiving scholarships are up to three times more satisfied with their schools' overall quality than non-recipients, and only half as many feel there are serious behavior problems in their schools. The report also discusses differences in demographics, religiosity, parental involvement at the school and other characteristics.

Rising Tide
Caroline Minter Hoxby
Education Next
Winter 2001What happens to the traditional public schools in an area where charter schools or privately-funded or publicly-funded scholarships are available? Caroline Hoxby offers test score data that shows that traditional public schools can make significant improvements when they have to compete for students.

The Looming Shadow
Jay P. Greene
Education Next
Winter 2001This study examines "whether vouchers inspired improvement among Florida's failing schools can be studied." In this report, the author provides evidence that this is, in fact, the case: "Schools that had received F grades in 1999 experienced the largest gains on the FCAT between 1999 and 2000."

Test-Score Effects of School Vouchers in Dayton, Ohio, New York City, and Washington, D.C.: Evidence from Randomized Field Trials
William G. Howell, Patrick J. Wolf, Paul E. Peterson, David E. Campbell
Paper prepared for the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.
September 2000 In this study of three privately-funded voucher programs, rearchers found that, after two years, the overall test score performance of African American students in all three cities increased by a statistically significant amount (6.3 National Percentile Ranking points).

The Effect of School Choice: An Evaluation of the Charlotte Children's Scholarship Fund
Jay P. Greene
The Manhattan Institute, Civic Report No. 12
August 2000

This Manhattan Institute Civic Report finds that school choice has positive results: The evidence from the Children's Scholarship Fund (CSF) program in Charlotte suggests that providing low-income families with scholarships has significant benefits for those families. This finding is consistent with the results from similar evaluations of scholarship programs in New York, Washington, D.C., and Dayton, Ohio as well as the results of evaluations of publicly funded school choice programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland.

A Survey of Results from Voucher Experiments: Where We Are and What We Know
Jay P. Greene
The Manhattan Institute
Civic Report No. 11
July 2000

This report offers substantial empirical data from studies conducted between 1995 and 2000. Greene finds "a positive consensus among...eight studies, of five existing choice programs, conducted by four different groups of researchers" on the benefits of school choice.

Competing to Win: How Florida's A+ Plan Has Triggered Public School Reform
Carol Innerst
April 2000

This report examines the ways in which public schools have responded to pressure to retain students while operating under Florida's Opportunity Scholarship program. Innerst says that the new "consequences" public schools face for not improving have given them "a sense of urgency and zeal."

School Choice in Dayton, Ohio: An Evaluation After One Year
William G. Howell and Paul E. Peterson
Harvard University
February 2000

In the 1998-1999 school year, a private scholarship program was created for low-income students in Montgomery County, Ohio. This Harvard study found that most of the participants were African Americans, and the participating students' scores saw a statistically significant improvement over their public school peers in the control group.

School Choice in Washington, D.C.: An Evaluation After One Year
Patrick J. Wolf, William G. Howell, Paul E. Peterson
Harvard University
February 2000

This study looked at the 1,000 students who participated in the Washington Scholarship Fund lottery for private school vouchers. This randomized field trial found that participating African American students in grades two through five outperformed their public-school peers by 7 national percentile points in math.

An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program
Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau
February 2000

This third evaluation of the Milwaukee voucher program by the Audit Bureau looked at participating pupils' characteristics, reasons for family participation, participating school compliance, and other indicators of academic quality.

Choice and Community: The Racial, Economic, and Religious Context of Parental Choice in Cleveland
Jay P. Greene
The Buckeye Institute
November 1999

This study found that parental choice in Cleveland did a better job of integrating students than did the traditional public school system. Further, "Of all of the students who attend a publicly-financed school of choice in Cleveland, only 16.5 percent currently attend a religious school."

An Evaluation of the Cleveland Voucher Program After Two Years
Paul E. Peterson, William G. Howell, Jay P. Greene
Program on Education Policy and Governance, Harvard University
June 1999

This report contains a review of responses from Cleveland parents whose students had been involved in the Cleveland publicly-sponsored scholarship program. The researchers found a high level of parental satisfaction among parents using vouchers when compared to parents who applied for but did not receive vouchers and parents of traditional public school students.

The Fiscal Impact of School Choice on the Milwaukee Public Schools
Howard L. Fuller, Ph.D., and George A. Mitchell
Marquette University Institute for the Transformation of Learning
March 1999

This study found that real Milwaukee Public School (MPS) spending grew more than 3 times faster than enrollment; state aid to MPS grew nearly 7 times faster than enrollment; and MPS property taxes declined 33 percent.

Evaluation of the Cleveland Scholarship Program: Second-Year Report (1997-1998)
Kim K. Metcalf
The Indiana Center for Evaluation, Indiana University
November 1998

This second evaluation of this multi-year project looked at the impact of the school choice program on students, families, and schools, paying particular attention to students' academic achievement. The main finding in this study was that the students who accepted the scholarship were very similar in race, family income, and family living arrangements to their public school peers.

Lessons from the Cleveland Scholarship Program
Jay P. Greene, William G. Howell, Paul E. Peterson
Harvard University's Program on Education Policy and Governance
October 15, 1997

This study of the Cleveland voucher program showed a high level of parental satisfaction with their choice school, high student retention rate among the choice schools, and measurable levels of academic improvement in some of the voucher students. 

Effectiveness of School Choice: The Milwaukee Experiment
Jay P. Greene, Paul E. Peterson, Jiangtao Du
Harvard Occasional Paper, March 1997

This paper reviewed student achievement while participating in the Milwaukee voucher program. The authors reported gains from the participating students over and above their public school peers, and the "results...are statistically significant for students remaining in the program for three to four years..."