Results in Louisiana and Indiana's voucher programs took a step in the right direction this week, with the release of one study and the leak of another.
Voucher critics made the two large statewide school choice programs into targets over the past year. Studies looking at just a few years' worth of data found students fell behind their public-school peers on reading and math tests after accepting a voucher to attend a private school.
The drip-drop of negative findings countered what had been a steady stream of studies showing private school choice programs didn't harm — and sometimes helped — student test score gains. A gathering narrative argued vouchers harm student achievement.
The new Indiana and Louisiana results reflect students' progress over a longer time period. And they call that narrative into question.
They show voucher students who remained in private schools for a few years eventually caught up to their private school peers. Some even posted achievement gains over time.
This highlights a consistent trend in other voucher studies, including a recent re-examination of voucher data from Washington D.C. When students leave public schools to accept private school scholarships, they tend to lose ground initially. Over time, their test scores get better as they adjust to new schools.
Schools take the time to adjust to new students, too. Private schools in much of Louisiana and Indiana had to figure out how to serve an influx of low-income and working-class students who couldn't previously afford tuition. And sometimes schools have to adjust to new standards, tests or regulations that come with scholarship programs.
The new results have drawn predictable reactions from teachers unions and school choice advocacy groups. They might not bring a clear-cut victory for either side of the debate. But they lend fresh credence to arguments from people like Lousiana School Superintendent John White, who argued partisans should give vouchers time to work before jumping to conclusions about their academic impact.
New years of data
Indiana's low-income voucher students see positive outcomes in reading and no difference in math after four years, according to updated findings that still have not yet been formally published. They were first divulged on public radio by Professors Mark Berends and Joseph Waddington and later released by Chalkbeat.
As with previous research, the authors found a decline in student performance in the first year. But they also found as years go by, student achievement in private schools begins to climb.
"The longer that a student is enrolled in a private school receiving a voucher, their achievement begins to turn positive in magnitude — to the degree that they're making up ground that they initially lost in their first couple of years in private school," Waddington stated in an interview with NPR. (more…)
Louisiana's voucher program is unique. It has more, and more comprehensive, regulations than most private school choice programs. It has fewer schools participating. And it's the first program of its kind to show such strong, negative academic results.
During a Friday forum on school vouchers and regulation hosted by the libertarian Cato Institute, Patrick Wolf, a University of Arkansas researcher who helped author a series of recent studies on private school choice in Louisiana, said there's not yet enough evidence to tell whether the Louisiana Scholarship Program's unique design helps explain the unprecedented finding that it harmed student achievement in its first two years.
Those results renewed a major philosophical debate in school choice circles. Does regulation of private schools that accept vouchers hamstring their performance and keep the best schools from participating? Or can it spur private schools to serve disadvantaged students, and to get substantially better over time?
A number of factors cloud the findings in Louisiana. Its voucher program is fairly new, first expanded statewide during the 2012-13 school year. Some students might have seen their academic performance drop as they adjusted to new schools. Some schools might have needed more time to adjust their curriculum and instruction to the state standardized tests, which voucher students are required to take. There are signs of improvement in Louisiana public schools, which served as a comparison for voucher schools.
But Wolf said those factors together explain less than half of the negative results. Some of the participating private schools may be been low-quality, or unequipped to educate low-income students who use vouchers.
The bad results in year one looked a bit better in year two, and John White, Lousiana's state schools superintendent, has told lawmakers that as the lowest-performing schools face sanctions and others get better at serving disadvantaged students, results will keep improving. He has also issued a challenge to those who criticize his state's approach to regulating school vouchers: Come up with a model for ensuring private schools can serve all students well, at scale. (more…)
Florida: A failing charter school cuts its principal a $500,000 check as it was closing its doors (Orlando Sentinel). Charter school supporters are also angered (redefinED).
Louisiana: State Superintendent John White is accused of lying to lawmakers about the state's new voucher program (theadvertiser.com). White is also summoned to court in a lawsuit filed by a school district that says the voucher program will interfere with its ability to comply with court-ordered desegregation orders (Associated Press). Debate ensues over whether proposed rules are stringent enough for schools wanting to participate in the program (Shreveport Times).
California: A record-setting 109 new charter schools opened in the state this year, lifting the total number of charter schools to 1,065 and enrollment to 484,000 (Associated Press).
Washington D.C.: Enrollment is up 1 percent in the district's traditional schools, and 11 percent in its charters (Associated Press).
Washington: A former charter school opponent is now a leading supporter of the state's charter ballot initiative (Seattle Times). School choice is a leading issue in a debate between state senate candidates (Tacoma News Tribune). (more…)
Texas: School choice critics claim vouchers threaten high school football because they will allegedly drain money from public schools (The Texas Tribune). More from KHOU.com. Response from redefinED.
Florida: State education leaders seek to double enrollment in charter schools over the next six years, from about 180,000 now to 360,000 (Orlando Sentinel). More from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Florida private schools that accept tax credit scholarships are part of a project to boost parental engagement (redefinED).
Alabama: Supporters say there is little chance a charter school bill will be back in the Legislature next year (Anniston Star).
Michigan: A newspaper poll finds only 1 in 5 Detroit residents think the school district offers the best learning options for their kids (Detroit News).
Louisiana: State Superintendent John White proposes new rules for private and parochial schools that want voucher dollars (Baton Rouge Advocate). He touts the new voucher program in a visit to New Orleans (wwltv.com). Arguments in the constitutional challenge against the program are postponed until next month (Associated Press). One district sees growth in its virtual school option (Baton Rouge Advocate.) (more…)
Ideologues tend to exaggerate political debate, but Louisiana school superintendent John White reminded us Tuesday that rational policy is the key to integrating vouchers into a robust public education system. The accountability that White introduced, and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) adopted, represents a thoughtful balance of testing, regulation and market forces that ultimately will require vouchers to prove their value.
That's a formula for how private learning options will become mainstream.
Lawmakers have shown themselves to be particularly inept at writing policy framework for vouchers so, in expanding the New Orleans voucher program to the rest of the state, the Louisiana Legislature punted accountability to the bureaucrats. That left White, a former Teach For America administrator and New York City schools executive under chancellor Joel Klein, with a task that requires careful calibration in a volatile environment. (As if to reinforce the rhetorical excess, one BESE board member on Tuesday assured his colleagues they were about to bite into the forbidden fruit of Eden and could be assured that “evil is going to arise.”)
What makes accountability so difficult is that there is still no clear blueprint. Every state with a voucher or tax credit scholarship has a different iteration, and the loudest voices are usually at the extremes – the voucher critics who demand the private schools be held to precisely the same standard as a public school and the voucher advocates who argue that no regulation is necessary because the market will force schools to respond. So the chore is to find the right balance, one with academic and financial oversight that taps into the accountability that follows from a parent who can walk out the door. This is made all the more challenging by the fact that, in most states, the students who receive the scholarship or voucher represent a minority of the enrollment in the private school.
White navigated the academic maze this way: 1) Every voucher student takes the state test; 2) The results of every test are reported on a statewide basis; 3) Any school with at least 40 students taking the test is held accountable; 4) Those schools will be evaluated on a scale similar to that of public schools. If they fail three out of any four years, their students will be given priority to attend other schools. Furthermore, the failing school will not be allowed to take new students and could be dropped from the program.
The rule has been criticized because the accountability portion is projected to capture only about a fourth of the participating schools in the first school year and schools will not be banned after one failing year. But the small number of schools with at least 40 tested students is the very nature of this school landscape. The 5,600 Louisiana students who receive vouchers this fall will not generally be attending schools where every student receives public support. Instead, they will go to private schools with mostly private-paying students, and you can’t reliably measure a school’s fitness based on two or three or a dozen student test scores.
That said, there is nothing sacrosanct about the lines that are drawn in this new Louisiana accountability rule, and they will no doubt be amended and improved over the years. But the rule is a commendable start and one, similar to the approach in Indiana, that makes an important statement about private learning options. They are part of, not in competition with, the public education system, and they need to be properly held to account.
That quote just had to be a headline. It’s from Louisiana’s state superintendent of education, John White, responding this week in the Baton Rouge Advocate to letters from teachers complaining about ed reform. Sometimes an op-ed is worth printing word for word:
The Advocate has recently published several letters to the editor on public education. I have to say as an educator, I’m disappointed with the prevailing tone and content of those letters opposing change.
Here are some passages that illustrate a common thread:
“We, the public school teachers of East Baton Rouge schools, can’t educate children who don’t want to be educated. We can’t educate children whose parents don’t care and are not involved.”
“ … the state is going to require that very poor students take the ACT … . The weaker of these students are not college-bound students who have no intention to attend college, yet he has to be compared and compete.”
And one writer simply stated, “Poverty is a significant factor affecting academic scores,” leaving it at that — as if that absolves us of any responsibility to educate the child.
I’m so disappointed in these comments for two reasons. First, they betray a mindset that forsakes the American dream. They show a sad belief among some that poverty is destiny in America, defying our core value that any child, no matter race, class or creed, can be the adult he or she dreams of being. Yes, poverty matters. Yes, it impacts learning. And that fact should only embolden us to do everything we can to break the cycle of poverty so another generation of children does not face the same challenges.
Second, and perhaps more disappointing, is that these letters were written by professional educators. (more…)
