As the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program has grown, so has the value of the scholarships, the number of participating schools, parental satisfaction, and the number of years students remain in the program.

Tall tales told by the program’s critics have grown, too. Among other errors, those critics continue to misstate a statistic regarding student retention from an Urban Institute report released in 2017 and updated in 2019

The report found that scholarship students are more likely to attend and graduate from college. Despite the good news, critics spin a yarn about a statistic which notes that 61% of them used the scholarship for two years or less. This “drop-out rate,” they say, signals widespread dissatisfaction among parents and lots of low-quality private schools.

This myth struck like a tornado, whirling in and out of nearly every hearing and floor debate during the 2021 Florida legislative session.

Not only does this statistic fail to reflect reality today; it says nothing about program quality. In fact, the Urban Institute authors tried to correct the record  when the myth was just a little, lonely dust devil.

“Our study finds positive effects on college enrollment and degree attainment, which makes it unlikely that broad dissatisfaction or dropping out is driving students to stop using the scholarship,” they wrote.

The authors speculated on possible reasons for the attrition rate in the study critics cite.

"This is likely attributable to the lower supply of private school schools [at the high school level] compared with private elementary or middle schools and to the fact that the scholarship amount was previously the same for all grade levels, despite high school tuition being higher,” they wrote.

Critics continue to ignore both explanations.

It’s worth noting that the Urban Institute examined students who utilized the scholarship between 2004 and 2010. Back then, scholarship values were worth far less, program eligibility restrictions were much higher, and there were far fewer participating private schools.

Attrition and years of participation over time

Since 2010, the Florida Tax Credit program has increased from 28,927 students attending 1,033 schools to 104,162 students attending 1,933 schools. Per-student scholarship amounts increased from $3,950 in 2010 (about $4,798 in today’s dollars) to about $6,800, while strict income eligibility rules have been relaxed to allow students to remain on the program longer while their parents receive small pay increases and promotions at work.

These factors have contributed to a significant reduction in the two-year attrition rate over time. Today, just 46% of students use the scholarship for two years or less. So, what explains this 46% two-year attrition rate?

Barriers remain, which keep students from staying longer on average. The biggest barrier reported by 36% of parents is a lack of private school options nearby.  In fact, the number of schools offering high school grade levels is about half the number of schools offering elementary grades. And since many private schools do not offer free transportation, lack of a nearby private high school can be a major barrier to remaining on the scholarship program.

Florida Tax Credit Scholarship tuition gap, 2020-21

Cost is another factor. The gap between the scholarship value and tuition amount grows as students enter higher grades.

Florida’s scholarship values remain relatively flat, despite an increase in tuition in middle and high school. The gap between tuition/fees and scholarships is $2,947 in elementary school. That gap jumps to $3,837 when a student enters middle school, and to $4,638 for high school. Many families have more than one child on the program. These are daunting gaps for scholarship families who have an average household income of $32,638 per year.

There are several reasons why students leave the program, just as there are numerous reasons why students leave local public schools. Dissatisfaction with school quality may be one reason, but it isn’t a primary one. According to the most recent survey by EdChoice, 89% of parents were satisfied with their available private school options.

In April 2020, Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers the Tax Credit Scholarship program and hosts this blog, surveyed 1,111 parents asking why they removed their child from the program. Just 11% cited academic concerns. Another 3% cited problems with teachers or administrators, 2% said poor school discipline, and fewer than 1% cited school safety as reasons for leaving.

Twenty percent of parents who responded said they no longer used the scholarship because they moved. In fact, moving is a common challenge when it comes to educating lower-income students, who often attend more than one school within the same year.

Low-income students are most likely to have higher rates of migration between schools regardless of whether the school is public or private. For example, 45% of all students attending high-poverty schools in Hillsborough County, 90% of whom qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a close proxy for the scholarship program, left their school within one year. It cannot be concluded that parents found these schools to be of “atrocious quality,” because there are many factors impacting why low-income students exit a school.

Finally, it is worth noting that over the last five years, 78% of scholarship students chose to renew the scholarship each year, and that the average student uses a scholarship for 3.1 years. Some students return to the program in later years, and some do not. School choice, after all, is about giving parents and students options, not holding them hostage to a preferred educational option.

Consider this whirling myth of misinformation officially wrangled.

Editor’s note: This piece from Step Up For Students’ public affairs manager Patrick Gibbons appeared today on the Daytona News Journal.

In a column last month, a local member of the League of Women Voters argues it is hypocritical to spend $1 billion on private schools without knowing how well students are performing.

For 12 consecutive years education researchers have reported that low-income students participating in the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship – typically among the lowest performers in their prior public school – have the same annual learning gains as all students, of all income levels nationwide.

As with public school students, these scholarship students are tested in reading and math in grades 3 through 10. The test results are given to parents and reported to the state, where the Florida Department of Education posts the results online each year.

In 2019 the Urban Institute released a report on the long-term impact of the scholarship program. The researchers found that scholarship students were, on average, up to 43% more likely to attend college and up to 20% more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree compared to similarly disadvantaged students in public schools.

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Editor’s note: This guest editorial written by Florida Sen. Joe Gruters, who represents District 32 and serves as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, first appeared in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

In her Nov. 1 column, (Herald Tribune opinions editor) Barbara Peters Smith wrote that she welcomes a debate on school vouchers – as do I. But she describes a very different education landscape than the hard facts reveal. Two decades of data demonstrate that Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program has benefited the low-income students it is aimed at.

First, we need to put to rest the idea that private schools improve outcomes because they “weed out” students less likely to succeed. The truth is students who choose the FTC – 68% of whom are Black or Hispanic, with an average annual family income of about $25,755 – are among the lowest-performing students in the public schools they leave behind.

According to research by the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University, new scholarship students scored roughly 5 percentile points lower in math and reading than scholarship-eligible public students in the year before they started on the scholarship. A 2013 report described the difference this way: “Scholarship participants have significantly poorer test performance in the year prior to starting the scholarship program than do non-participants … These differences are large in magnitude and are statistically significant.”

If that is “weeding out,” then private schools are doing a poor job of it – they’re taking the kids who have the biggest mountains to climb academically.

And yet, standardized test score analyses of FTC students consistently show that even though scholarship students were, on average, the lowest-performing students in their prior public schools, they’re now making the same annual learning gains as students of all income levels nationally. In other words, the average scholarship student has moved from falling further behind grade level each year to gaining a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s worth of time.

That has led to long-term success. In its 2019 report, the Urban Institute found that FTC students were up to 43% more likely to enroll in four-year colleges than their public school peers, and up to 20% more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees. For those who used the scholarship four or more years, the outcomes were even stronger – up to 99% more likely to attend four-year colleges, and up to 45% more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.

All these improved outcomes are coming at far less cost than the alternative. According to a 2019 analysis by Florida TaxWatch, the average amount for a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship was $6,447 in 2017-18, while the average per-pupil funding for Florida district schools was $10,856. That puts the value of the scholarship at 59% of the average, per-pupil cost in district schools.

It’s not just private school students who are benefiting from scholarships. A report this year from the National Bureau of Economic Research found as the FTC program expanded, students attending public schools most affected by the increased competition from private schools experienced higher test scores, reduced absenteeism and lower suspension rates.

Meanwhile, during this two-decades growth in tax credit scholarship enrollment – and education choice in general – Florida overall has made impressive strides in academic achievement. Florida ranks No. 3 in the nation in K-12 achievement, its highest position ever. The state also ranks No. 1, No. 1, No. 3, and No. 8 on the four core tests of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

So much for choice dragging down Florida public schools.

The results are indisputable positives for Florida students, particularly low-income students. That’s why education choice supporters like me welcome a debate on scholarship programs: We have the facts on our side.

Seventeen years ago, a group of business and community leaders in Tampa Bay decided to renovate rather than raze an old, abandoned public school. The spooky building with stately red brick once served generations of Cuban and Italian kids in Tampa’s historic Ybor City neighborhood. The group wanted to restore its former glory by transforming it into a premier private middle school for black and Hispanic students. With help from a then-fledgling school choice program, that’s what happened.

Today, Academy Prep graduates routinely matriculate to top high schools and colleges. And as a new paper published by the R Street Institute spotlights, it’s but one example of the kind of civil society engagement unleashed by the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, the nation’s largest private school choice program. (The scholarship is administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

Written by Victoria Bell (she authored it while associate policy director for educational opportunity at the Foundation for Excellence in Education; she’s now assistant director of K-12 education relationships at The Philanthropy Roundtable), the case study explores an underappreciated dynamic core to private school choice. Creation of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship in 2001 energized parents, educators and an incredibly diverse mix of non-governmental entities to expand educational opportunities for Florida’s most disadvantaged students.

The scholarship allowed existing private schools to be a bigger part of the solution. It spawned creation of new private schools. It empowered educators to create new models. It empowered parents to choose them, or not. Bell offers examples of all that. Community groups, like the one behind Academy Prep, where nearly every student uses a tax credit scholarship, got involved. So did hundreds of churches and faith leaders. So did hundreds of corporations, thanks to a funding mechanism that allowed them to donate towards scholarships in return for tax credits. All of this happened voluntarily, with government offering incentives but an otherwise light touch.

The result: Better outcomes at less cost. The program now serves more than 100,000 low-income students, with an average annual family income of $25,743. And the academic outcomes are encouraging. A study released last year by the Urban Institute found scholarship students are 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees than like students in public schools. This, even though other rigorous research shows scholarship students were, on average, the lowest performers in their prior public schools. And that the scholarship is worth 59 percent of total per-pupil funding for students in public schools.

The scholarship is a “successful example of public policy and civil society combining to solve a problem,” Bell concludes. “More Florida students than ever before have access to educational environments that are equipping them with the skills they need to pursue the American dream.”

I’m especially grateful Bell included the scholarship program’s impact on Catholic schools. As she notes, the scholarship is a key reason Catholic schools in Florida, unlike Catholic schools in virtually every other state in America, are not continuing to disappear. Enrollment has remained steady in recent years, and even ticked up slightly. Knowing how much Catholic schools have delivered high-quality education to low-income families for generations, this trend line has yet to get the recognition it deserves, either in Florida or beyond.

Bell focused on the tax credit scholarship, but there’s no doubt Florida’s ever-expanding menu of choice programs is stoking similar reactions. More than 130,000 students are enrolled in private pre-schools with help from Florida’s Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten program. More than 30,000 students with disabilities use the McKay Scholarship to attend private schools. Another 13,000 use the Gardiner Scholarship (also administered by Step Up), an education savings account for students with special needs.

The Gardiner Scholarship is still shy of its sixth birthday, but there are already 10,000 vendors in its orbit, from tutors to therapists to private schools. As this new wave of choice expands, look for an even more amplified response from civil society – and even more hands on deck.

As Florida senators get their first look today at a new private school scholarship for economically disadvantaged students, some familiar taunts about academic results for the existing Tax Credit Scholarship have resurfaced. Be wary of rhetorical flourish.

Yes, the low-income scholarship students are not required to take the Florida Standard Assessment administered in traditional public schools. But they are required to take state-approved nationally norm-referenced tests whose academic validity is not in dispute.

So those who claim “Floridians have no idea if private schools are succeeding,” as one South Florida newspaper wrote recently, are ignoring 10 years of testing data to the contrary. They also neglect extraordinary new independent research that shows scholarship students are more likely to attend and graduate from college.

The testing trend line

Students in grades 3-10 on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarships have been required since 2006 to take a standardized test, and most take the Stanford Achievement. In the most recent report, their average percentile ranking in reading was 48 and in math was 46. That’s basically average, which is made more encouraging by the fact that these students are among the poorest in the state (and were the lowest performing from public schools they left).

The more important measure is whether the students are learning, and the bottom line has been almost identical each year: These low-income students have achieved the same annual gains as students of all income levels nationally.

Test score gains for individual schools with at least 30 tested scholarship students are also reported annually. In the most recent report, 342 schools were listed.

Comparisons with public school students

When budget cuts removed norm-referenced portions of the state test in 2011, researchers were no longer able to make a direct comparison between scholarship and public school students. In that 2011 academic findings report, though, researcher David Figlio concluded that scholarship students outperformed their peers in public schools, even though the public school students had higher incomes.

Figlio wrote of what he viewed as increasing gains: “These differences, while not large in magnitude, are larger and more statistically significant than in the past year's results, suggesting that successive cohorts of participating students may be gaining ground over time.”

Students who enter and leave the scholarship

From the earliest years, state researchers have found that scholarship students who come from public schools were among the lowest academic performers in schools that themselves had disproportionately low test scores. That’s no slight on the public school. It’s intuitive. If a student is doing well in his or her current school, why change?

Similarly, scholarship students who return to public school are among the lowest performers in the private school they leave behind.

This recurring fact has been stretched in the current debate to imply that scholarship students who return to public schools have learned essentially nothing. That’s not what test results show, and, further, Figlio addressed that question head-on in his 2013 report. He looked at students who had switched twice – from public to private and back to public. In those cases, the state public test scores remained essentially the same.

Wrote Figlio: “FTC participants who return to the public sector performed, after their first year back in the public schools, in the same ballpark but perhaps slightly better on the FCAT than they had before they left the Florida public schools. The most careful reading of this evidence indicates that participation in the FTC program appears to have neither advantaged nor disadvantaged the program participants who ultimately return to the public sector.”

Beyond test scores

In February, the respected Urban Institute released perhaps the most significant research in the scholarship program’s history. The report was a followup to work released in 2017 and was directed again by the Institute’s Director of Education Policy, Matthew Chingos, who has a PhD in government from Harvard University. His team matched data between roughly 89,000 scholarship and public school students from 2003 to 2011, representing the largest study of its kind in the nation.

The institute found that scholarship students are more likely than their public school peers to attend and graduate from college. The difference is striking.

Scholarship students as a whole were up to 43 percent more likely to attend college, a difference that rose to 99 percent for those on the scholarship at least four years. Similarly, scholarship students as a whole were up to 20 percent more likely to get a degree, a difference that rose to 45 percent for those on the scholarship for at least four years.

A new study from the Urban Institute on college enrollment/completion rates of Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students represents both a triumph and a call for additional action. Let’s touch upon the triumph part first.

The analysis shows statistically significant benefits for students participating in the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship in both college attendance and degree competition compared to a matched sample of similar Florida public school students. Moreover, the study finds that the longer students participate in the program, the greater the size of positive effect.

Some context makes these findings all the more impressive: The average size of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship is less than $7000 on average while the state of Florida spent $10,145 per pupil in 2015-16. Increasing the return on K-12 investment is precisely what Florida needs, and what the tax-credit program delivers.

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program provides scholarships for low-income students to attend private schools. Florida is among those states with the highest degree competition rates in the country, and this includes very successful programs providing bonuses to public schools for students passing college credit by exam. We have reason to suspect, therefore, that the Florida “blue” columns in the Urban Institute chart above would rank competitively if we had similar data from the other 49 states. Nevertheless, the FTC students (“yellow” columns) show statistically significantly higher attendance rates across all attendance groups.

The progressively larger impact seen in the Urban Institute analysis sits comfortably with earlier random assignment studies of choice programs, which found modest but (crucially) cumulative year-by-year gains for choice students. Seeing significant long-term higher education benefits for disadvantaged students at a lower per-pupil cost represents an unambiguous triumph of policy innovation. This success should embolden further reform.

These results are great, but students need much more. Thus far, we only have scratched the surface of the potential to positively transform learning. It is vital to give families the opportunity to choose a good-fit school for their child, and there are a variety of benefits to such policies above and beyond those captured in the Urban Institute study. School, however, represents only part of the picture to learning, and what the country and Florida needs is a process to discover methods to substantially improve learning on a continual basis. In other words, American learning should constantly improve.

Status-quo defenders frequently lay the blame for the failings of public education at the feet of poverty. This school of thought struggles to explain why countries with far less money and far greater poverty manage to deliver a much higher bang for the education buck. Take a gander at the above chart and ask yourself: Just how much of the success in American learning can we attribute to our schools?

If history is any guide, we safely can conclude that a system of ZIP-code assigned schools governed by boards with visibility and turnout with few to no other choices is not likely to produce continual improvement. We’ve enjoyed some success with quasi-market mechanisms to allow educators to create alternative public schools and policies to allow select students to attend private schools. We should, however, view these policies as primitive prototypes in an evolutionary process.

In 2006, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, which included a bipartisan mix of the great and good including two former Secretaries of Education and an assortment of other grandees concluded, “We’ve squeezed everything we can out of a system that was designed a century ago. We’ve not only put in lots more money and not gotten significantly better results, we’ve also tried every program we can think of and not gotten significantly better results at scale. This is the sign of a system that has reached its limits.” Commissioner Jack Jennings told the Christian Science Monitor: “I think we’ve tried to do what we can to improve American schools within the current context. Now we need to think much more daringly.”

Some 13 years later, these assessments still ring true – and not just for public schools. School vouchers and charter schools were radical and state-of-the-art technologies in 1990 and 1991, respectively. We need new policies, new schools, new school models and more choice among methods of education in addition to schools and policies that will empower teachers to realize their own visions of a high quality education. Emboldened by the success of our prototype policies, we do indeed need to think much more daringly.

The largest private school choice program in America got more solid evidence of its effectiveness Monday.

The lower-income, mostly minority students using the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship to attend private schools are up to 43 percent more likely to enroll in four-year colleges than like students in public schools, and up to 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees, according to a new study released Monday by the Urban Institute.

The outcomes are even stronger for students who use the scholarship four or more years. Those students are up to 99 percent more likely to attend a four-year college than their public school peers, and up to 45 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.

The new findings build on a 2017 study that was the first of its kind, but also more limited. The previous study found scholarship students were more likely to enroll in college and earn associate degrees, but not significantly more likely to earn four-year degrees. However, the 2017 study only included data from public colleges in Florida, and the researchers cautioned that, as a result, “our results may understate the true impact of FTC participation on college enrollment and degree attainment.”

This time, researchers Matthew M. Chingos, Tomas Monarrez and Daniel Kuehn included private colleges and colleges outside of Florida. They also included college enrollment data through 2018, resulting in a much bigger pool of students to examine.

The researchers reported the outcomes for two groups of students: those who began using scholarships in grades 3-7, and those who began using scholarships in grades 8-10. The scholarship students in both groups posted better results, across the board, than their non-FTC counterparts.

Students who began using the scholarship in grades 3-7 were 12 percent more likely to enroll in any college, and 16 percent more likely to enroll in a four-year college. For students who began using the scholarship in grades 8-10, the corresponding figures were 19 percent and 43 percent.

Those students were more likely than non-FTC students to earn bachelor’s degrees, too. Those who began using the scholarship in grades 3-7 were 11 percent more likely. Those who began using the scholarship in grades 8-10 were 20 percent more likely.

The study also found, as did the 2017 report, that long-term outcomes improved the longer the students used the scholarship. For example, students who began using the scholarship in grades 8-10, and used the scholarship four or more years, were 99 percent more likely to enroll in four-year colleges and 45 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.

The latest findings are sure to add to the debate about the best way to drive quality in public education.

Critics often argue that private school choice programs are not “accountable” enough. In Florida, for example, private schools participating in state-supported choice programs are not required to be accredited (though many are), or to have state-certified teachers (though many do). Supporters, by contrast, have pushed for what they consider a more effective balance between accountability through regulations, and the accountability that comes when parents have the power, via portable scholarships, to stay or leave.

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, created in 2001 and funded through corporate contributions, now serves 99,453 students in 1,799 private schools. It’s administered by nonprofits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.

Sixty-eight percent of FTC scholarship students are black or Hispanic, their average family income is about $25,755 a year, and a decade’s worth of standardized test scores shows they were typically the most struggling students in their prior public schools. According to the most recent funding comparison across education sectors, the value of a tax credit scholarship is 55 percent of average per-pupil spending in Florida district schools.

The Urban Institute researchers used data from the Florida Department of Education and Step Up to match scholarship students to public school students with a list of similar characteristics, including age, grade, race, language, disability status, free lunch participation, and math and reading scores. “However,” they cautioned, “it still leaves open the possibility that participants and non-participants differ in unmeasured ways, such as parental engagement, family religiosity, or experience in the public school.”

Other studies that gauged long-term outcomes for private school choice programs also found encouraging evidence. Students in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program were significantly more likely to graduate from high school, for example, while voucher students in Milwaukee were more likely to enroll and persist in college.

Step Up For Students research manager Dava Hankerson Fedrick contributed to this post.

School vouchers and tax credit scholarships may not always improve participants' standardized test performance, but a growing crop of studies suggest they are cost-effective when it comes to encouraging economically disadvantaged students to pursue a college education.

Two recent Urban Institute studies, one on Milwaukee and the other on Washington, D.C., continue that trend. The reports follow similar results from a 2017 Urban Institute study of Florida's Tax Credit Scholarship program.

Students in Milwaukee using vouchers to attend private schools were more likely to attend college, while students in Washington were no more or less likely, to attend college than their public-school peers. Past Urban Institute research in Florida showed modest positive college attendance and associate degree gains among school choice participants.

Researchers Patrick Wolf, John Witte and Brian Kisida found Milwaukee voucher students were 6 percentage points more likely to attend a four-year college than their public school peers. Milwaukee choice students were 1-2 percentage points more likely to graduate college, but that difference was not statistically significant.

The researchers conclude, "students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program tend to have higher levels of many measures of educational attainment than a carefully matched comparison of Milwaukee Public School students."

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Schools as shelters: A bill is filed that would require any K-12 school that receives construction funding from the state to be available as an emergency shelter or, if it doesn't meet the requirements to be a shelter, for any other use officials think is necessary. That requirement would include charter schools. H.B. 779 was filed by state Rep. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa. No companion bill has yet been filed in the Senate. Gradebook.

School choice growth: New research suggests that the growth of Florida's tax credit scholarship program has not led to a corresponding increase in the number of schools that perform poorly academically. Urban Institute researchers conclude: "This analysis indicates that participation in the [tax credit scholarship] program has not shifted toward schools with weaker track records of improving student outcomes, as measured by two broad categorizations. But it provides less guidance on the ideal level of government regulation in private school choice programs." Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, helps administer the tax credit scholarship program. The program has grown from 50,000 low-income students receiving scholarships in 2012 to more than 100,000 this year. redefinED.

District consultant: The Duval County School Board will spend $480,000 for a consultant to help turn around eight struggling schools. Turnaround Solutions Inc. was founded by James Young, a former Duval principal with experience in turning around failing schools. Three of the schools have less than a year to boost their grades from the state, while the others have until the end of the 2018-2019 school year. If they don't improve to at least a C grade, state law requires the district to close the schools or allow them to be taken over. Florida Times-Union.

Panel: Turn over school: An oversight committee at Oscar Patterson Elementary School is recommending that the struggling school be turned over to an outside manager. The Bay County school has gotten poor grades from the state the past two years, and under state law the district has to contract with an outside entity to manage the school, close it and transfer the students, or close it and reopen it as a charter school. The recommendation now goes to Superintendent Bill Husfelt. If he agrees with the recommendation, the district must have a signed contract with a management company by Jan. 31, 2018. Panama City News Herald.

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Update (Dec. 5): This article has been significantly revised to reflect an update of the underlying report published by the Brookings Institution. The author of that report previously miscalculated the growth of schools where a majority of students use tax credit scholarships. This post, and the second chart, have been updated to reflect those corrections.

New data from the Urban Institute look at the question: Is the nation's largest private school choice program fueling the growth of academically dubious schools?

The think tank earlier this fall released a report showing low-income students who use Florida tax credit scholarships are more likely to enroll in college and obtain associate degrees. Some types of private schools had stronger positive effects. Those included Catholic schools, non-Christian religious schools and schools where fewer than half of students used scholarships.

The program has doubled in size since 2012, growing from just over 50,000 students to more than 100,000. In a follow-up report released this morning, Urban Institute researchers asked whether that meant more students use scholarships to enroll in the types of schools with weaker results.

The answer, according to an article published by the Brookings Institution: Not when it comes to religious affiliations. But the proportion of schools where a majority of students use scholarships has grown. (more…)