RESEARCH

The Education Freedom Index
(September 2000),
by Jay P. Greene

This study focuses on the availability of various kinds of school-choice in each state, including school vouchers, education tax credits, charter schools, home schooling, and open enrollment. Each state is ranked for overall education freedom as well as in each of the various kinds of school choice. New York ranked 27th for overall education freedom, 15th for availability of charter schools, 8th for government-assisted private school options, 47th for availability of home school options, 19th for availability of inter-district transfer options, and 23rd for availability of relocation options.

Test-Score Effects of School Vouchers in Dayton, Ohio, New York City, and Washington D.C.: Evidence from Randomized Field Trials
(August 28, 2000),
by William G. Howell, Patrick J. Wolf, Paul E. Peterson and David E. Campbell

This study found that "in the three cities taken together, the average, overall test-score performance of African American students who switched from public to private schools was, after one year, 3.3 NPR points higher, and, after two years, 6.3 NPR points higher than the performance of the control group remaining in public schools. In each city, the difference after two years was statistically significant…Results for African Americans did not vary significantly by subject matter. Average differences, as observed in the three cities together, between those attending private schools and the control group in public school were 6.2 NPR points in math, and 6.3 percentile points in reading."

The Effect of School Choice: An Evaluation of the Charlotte Children's Scholarship Fund
(September 2000)
by Jay P. Greene

Providing low-income families vouchers or scholarships with which they selected a private school improved student achievement in the Children's Scholarship Fund (CSF) program in Charlotte. The study finds that "receiving a scholarship to attend private school improves scores on standardized math tests by between 5.9 and 6.2 national percentile ranking points," and improved "standardized reading tests by between 5.4 and 7.7 national percentile ranking points" Also, nearly twice as many choice parents gave their child's school an A (53%), compared to the public school parents (26%). According to Greene, "Choice parents were also nearly twice as likely to report being "very satisfied" with virtually all aspects of their children's school: location, safety, teaching quality, course content, class size, facilities, student respect for teachers, information on student progress, religious observance, parental support for school, discipline, clarity of school goals, teamwork among staff, teaching moral values, academic quality, and teacher respect for students."

A Survey of Results from Voucher Experiments: Where We Are and What We Know
(September 2000)
by Jay P. Greene

"It is...important to note that despite some well-publicized disagreements over research findings in recent years, there is a remarkable amount of consensus among the researchers who have collected and analyzed the data from recent programs on the general direction of the effects of school choice. These researchers largely differ on the confidence with which conclusions can be drawn and the inferences that can reasonably be made for shaping public policy, but they do not differ on their general assessments of the programs they have examined. That is, all of the researchers who have served as evaluators of the publicly-funded choice programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland as well as the privately-funded programs in Washington, D.C., Dayton, New York, and San Antonio agree that these programs have been generally positive developments and have supported their continuation if not expansion. If one only examined the competing interest group and research community spin on the various evaluations instead of reading the evaluations themselves, one might easily miss the level of positive consensus that exists. This positive consensus is all the more remarkable given the politically contentious nature of the issue and the rewards scholars have for highlighting disagreements with one another. As this paper will demonstrate, there is largely agreement among the researchers who have collected and analyzed the flood of new data on school choice that these programs are generally positive in their effects and ought to be continued if not expanded."

The Truth about Education Vouchers: New Information on School Choice
(April 2000),
by Howard L. Fuller

"The school choice debate has generated an array of competing claims and information. Many reporters seeking objective information have concluded that the evidence is 'inconclusive,' 'mixed,' or 'contradictory.'"

"New information suggests that a reassessment of that view is in order. For example, there is an emerging consensus among several scholars suggesting that school choice experiments have had largely positive effects."

Competing to Win: How Florida's A+ Plan has Triggered Public School Reform
(April 2000)
by Carrol Innerst

"In this report, Carol Innerst, who for decades provided balanced coverage of education as a journalist, details how Florida school districts have undertaken significant efforts to improve public schools in response to the competitive pressure applied by the state's groundbreaking Opportunity Scholarships program." (Quote from the report's introduction by Howard Fuller, Former Superintendent, Milwaukee Public Schools)

School Choice 2000: What's Happening in the States
(March 30, 2000),
by Nina Shokraii Rees, the Heritage Foundation

In this report, Nina Shokraii Rees, Senior Education Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, provides information about the status of the school choice movement in each state. Various statistics and analyses, including enrollment in K-12 public and private schools, K-12 public and private school performance, K-12 public school expenditures, K-12 public school teachers, background, position of the governor, composition of the state legislature, and recent developments. Useful contacts are provided at the end of each state section.

School Choice and American Constitutionalism
(March 10, 2000),
by Joseph P. Viteritti

In this paper, Joseph P. Viteritti argues, "providing families with an opportunity to attend public, private or religious schools with public support is not only permissible under the First Amendment but it is also consistent with the principles of equality and political pluralism that underlie American Constitutionalism."

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

"In early 1998 the Parents Advancing Choice in Education (PACE) program offered low-income families an opportunity to win scholarships to send their children to private schools in Dayton and other parts of Montgomery County, Ohio. Students entering kindergarten through twelfth grade qualified. PACE offered scholarships to 515 students who were in public schools and 250 students who were already enrolled in private schools. The program began in September of 1998. This evaluation examines the program's impact on those students in grades 2-8 who had previously been attending public schools. In 1999 the program continued, augmented by resources made available by the Children's Scholarship Fund, a nationwide scholarship program. PACE awarded scholarships by lottery, thereby making it possible to conduct an evaluation designed as a randomized experiment. This evaluation compares students test scores and questionnaire responses of families who received the scholarship with those who entered the lottery but did not receive a scholarship. All parents were invited to respond to the questionnaires; students took the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in reading and mathematics; and students in grades 4 through 8 responded to student questionnaires."

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

In this paper, Howell, Peterson, and Wolf provide background on the Washington Scholarship Fund and examine participation in the scholarship program and the process of selecting a school. They include information about the participating schools, including expenditures and facilities, ethnic composition, and special education. They also examine communications between the schools and the parents, homework, parental involvement, religious practices, parental satisfaction, and other topics that are important to students and their parents.

The Racial, Economic, and Religious Context of Parental Choice in Cleveland
(October 8, 1999),
by Jay P. Greene

"Despite the claims of critics, school choice in Cleveland contributes to racial integration by providing families with access to private schools that, on average, are better racially integrated than are the public schools in the Cleveland metropolitan area. Nearly a fifth (19.0%) of recipients of a voucher in Cleveland attend private schools that have a racial composition that resembles the average racial composition of the Cleveland area (defined as having a proportion of minority students in the school that is within 10% of the average proportion of minorities in metropolitan Cleveland). Only 5.2% of public schools students in the Cleveland metropolitan area are in comparably integrated schools. More than three-fifths (60.7%) of public school students in metropolitan Cleveland attend schools that are almost entirely white or almost entirely minority in their racial composition. Half of the students in the Cleveland Scholarship Program are in comparably segregated schools. This better integration in private schools participating in the choice program is achieved without sacrificing the economic and religious heterogeneity of those schools. Of all of the students who attend a publicly-financed school of choice in Cleveland, only 16.5% currently attend a religious school. Yet the evidence on racial integration suggests that access to a choice program that includes religious schools makes a significant contribution to promoting racial integration in Cleveland schools."

An Evaluation of the Horizon Scholarship Program in the Edgewood Independent School District, San Antonio, Texas: The First Year
(September 1999),
by Paul E. Peterson, David Myers and William G. Howell.

"Do school vouchers take the 'best and the brightest' from public schools? Do vouchers allow private schools to 'cream' the top of the public school? Are students from low-income families who receive vouchers admitted to a school they prefer? Are low-income voucher students at risk of suspension and expulsion? Answers to these questions are provided by an evaluation of a voucher program of national significance--it is the first to offer vouchers to all students from low-income families residing in a particular school district. The program, which was announced in April 1998, is located in the Edgewood school district in San Antonio, Texas."

An Evaluation of the Cleveland Voucher Program After Two Years
(September 1999)
by Paul E. Peterson, William G. Howell and Jay P. Greene

In this paper, Peterson, Howell, and Greene outline the origins of the Cleveland voucher program, present results of the parent survey they conducted, examine and analyze school mobility rates, discuss market penetration, and present their findings about test scores. The study was conducted by Paul E. Peterson is Director of the Program on Educational Policy and Governance (http://data.fas.harvard.edu/pepg/index.htm) at Harvard University, William G. Howell of Stanford University and Jay P. Greene of the University of Texas at Austin.

The Effect of Private Education on Political Participation, Social Capital, and Tolerance: An Examination of the Latino Political Survey
(November 4, 1998),
by Jay P. Greene, Joseph Giammo and Nicole Mellow

"Considerable research exists to demonstrate that the amount of education that people receive is strongly related to the political attitudes and behaviors they display. People with more years of formal education tend to be more politically active, possess higher levels of social capital, and demonstrate greater levels of tolerance. Little empirical research exists, however, on whether different types of education, such as public or private schooling, have significantly different effects on these political outcomes. In this article we examine the effect of public and private education on political values. We focus on the effect of different types of education on the political values of a nationally representative sample of Latinos, as measured in the Latino National Political Survey (LNPS). Given that the dissemination of basic, desirable political values is thought to be particularly important for immigrant populations, focusing on Latinos, of whom a disproportionate number are immigrants, is particularly relevant. The findings of our analyses are that private education contributes to higher levels of political participation, social capital, and tolerance than does public education after controlling for a variety of factors."

Initial Findings from an Evaluation of School Choice Programs in Washington, D.C. and Dayton, Ohio
(October 24, 1998),
by Paul E. Peterson, Jay P. Greene, William G. Howell and William McCready

"In the summer of 1998 President Bill Clinton vetoed congressional legislation that would have established a pilot school voucher program for low-income families in the District of Columbia. While this veto killed any chance of a publicly funded voucher program being established in the nation's capital, it did not curb reforms within the private sector. Indeed, when Clinton issued his veto, the Washington Scholarship Fund Pilot Program (WSF), a privately funded voucher program established in 1997, was preparing to send over 1,000 low-income children to the private school of their choice."

"At about the same time the Parents Advancing Choice in Education (PACE) program offered school scholarship to students from low-income families in Dayton and in other parts of Montgomery County, Ohio. Students entering kindergarten through twelfth grade were eligible, though the research program is limited to studying those entering grades one through eight. For the 1998-99 school year, scholarships were offered to 530 students previously enrolled in public schools and 250 students previously in private schools."

"The evaluations of these pilot programs are a joint project of the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, the Northern Illinois University's Social Science Research Institute and, in Dayton's case, the University of Dayton."

An Evaluation of the New York City School Choice Scholarships Program: The First Year
(October 1998),
by Paul E. Peterson, David Myers and William G. Howell

"The School Choice Scholarships Foundation (SCSF) announced in February 1997 that it would provide 1,300 scholarships so that children from low-income families currently attending public schools could transfer to private schools. The scholarships were worth up to $1,400 annually and could be redeemed for at least three years at both religious and secular schools. SCSF received initial application forms from over 20,000 students between February and late April 1997. Scholarship recipients were selected in a lottery held in May 1997 and began school the following fall."

"In this paper we report the first-year results for an evaluation of the SCSF program. The evaluation takes advantage of the fact that the SCSF lottery allowed for the conduct of a natural randomized experiment, in which students were allocated randomly to scholarship and control groups."

Integration Where it Counts: A Study of Racial Integration in Public and Private School Lunchrooms
(September 10, 1998),
by Jay P. Greene and Nicole Mellow

"The belief that public schools produce better integration than private schools is deeply held by many people, but it is unfortunately supported by little empirical evidence. In this paper we take a systematic look at integration in a random sample of public and private schools in two cities. Unlike previous studies of integration in schools, our data are drawn from a setting in which racial mixing has greater meaning: the lunchroom. We also develop new measures of integration that allow for easier, more meaningful comparisons between different school systems. Our analyses suggest that private schools tend to offer a more racially integrated environment than do public schools. The primary explanation for private schools' success at integration is that private school attendance is not as closely attached to where one lives as attendance at public schools. Public schools tend to replicate and reinforce racial segregation in housing. Because private schools do not require that their students live in particular neighborhoods, they can more easily overcome segregation in housing to provide integration in school. The strong religious mission and higher social class found in most private schools are also factors that contribute to better racial integration."

Initial Findings from an Evaluation of School Choice Programs in Washington, D.C.
(September 1, 1998),
Paul E. Peterson, Jay P. Greene, William G. Howell and William McCready

"In the summer of 1998 President Bill Clinton vetoed congressional legislation that would have established a pilot school voucher program for low-income families in the District of Columbia. However, a similar privately-funded program, the Washington Scholarship Fund Pilot Program (WSF), was established in 1997 through the expansion of an already existing scholarship fund. WSF awarded scholarships by lottery, thereby making it possible to conduct an evaluation designed as a randomized experiment. This initial report compares the responses of qualified families with children currently in public schools with those of families with children in private schools. Parental responses are from all applicants; most student responses are from pupils in fifth and sixth grades."

New Findings from the Cleveland Scholarship Program: A Reanalysis of Data from the Indiana University School of Education Evaluation
(May 6, 1998),
by Paul E. Peterson, Jay P. Greene and William G. Howell

"In March 1995 the State of Ohio established the Cleveland Scholarship Program (CSP) that provided families up to $2,250 toward the cost of attending the private school of their choice. The program was initially limited to children in grades kindergarten through grade three. Nearly 2,000 students participated in the first year of the scholarship program, which began in September 1996. Most students came from public schools or were just beginning school; only about 25 percent of the students had previously been attending private schools."

"Due to widespread public interest in school choice as a possible way of improving educational opportunity for children from low-income, inner-city families, two evaluations of the first year of CSP were conducted. The initial study, undertaken by Harvard University's Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG), compared the satisfaction levels of a cross-section of parents participating in the program with the satisfaction of those who initially applied but whose children remained in public schools. PEPG found much higher levels of parental satisfaction with Cleveland's private schools than with its public schools. The PEPG research team also obtained test score data from 263 students attending two newly established choice schools, the Hope schools. PEPG found significant test score gains at the Hope schools in all four grades."

"In March 1998 the Indiana University School of Education released its evaluation of CSP. This evaluation found no effect of the first year of the scholarship program on the test scores of 94 third-grade students attending choice schools other than the Hope schools."

"In April 1998 the data from the Indiana University evaluation were made available, providing other researchers an opportunity to see whether the results from the two evaluations can be compared. We first present the original PEPG test-score results from the Hope schools, then the new findings from a re-analysis of data from the Indiana University evaluation."

Initial Findings from the Evaluation of the New York School Choice Scholarships Foundation Program
(November 1997),
by Paul Peterson, David Myers, Josh Haimson, and William G. Howell

Analysis for this study found that the sample chosen for the scholarship program is similar to a sample not receiving scholarships. According to the study, "applicants for the SCSF [School Choice Scholarship Fund] scholarships were very disadvantaged, both academically and economically. Test scores in reading and math were very low, average family incomes were well below the poverty line, and a high percentage of families were receiving food stamps, Medicaid, and income assistance. Few significant differences distinguish scholarship winners from those not selected."

Effectiveness of School Choice: The Milwaukee Experiment
(March 1997),
by Jay P. Greene, Paul E. Peterson and Jiangtao Du

"Declining trust in government has been well-documented, perhaps because efficiency gains lag those in the more competitive private sector. If so, trust in government might be enhanced by privatizing the delivery of such government-financed services as education, the most costly public service."

"Evidence from the Milwaukee school choice program suggests that privatization may result in efficiency gains. Though costs per pupil are lower in private schools, students score higher on math and reading achievement tests. These findings are based upon a randomized experiment less likely to suffer from selection bias than studies that depend on non-experimental data. Results reported are statistically significant for students remaining in the program for three to four years, when these are jointly estimated. The size of the effects of private school attendance ranges from .1 to .5 of a standard deviation, magnitudes that educational researchers have regarded as moderately large."

Lessons from the Cleveland Scholarship Program
(October 15, 1997),
by Jay P. Greene, William G. Howell and Paul E. Peterson

The Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program (CSTP) "is the first program in the country to offer state-funded scholarships that can be redeemed at both secular and parochial schools." Findings after one year of operation showed that parents were motivated to apply for a scholarship for their children based on academic concerns, "that parents of scholarship recipients were much more satisfied with every aspect of their choice school than applicants who did not receive a scholarship, but attended public school instead." Also "choice schools" (those chosen by parents to sent their children to) did well at retaining students in the program. Most importantly, academic gains were evident in preliminary test score results in mathematics and reading.

Coping with Competition: How School Systems Respond to School Choice
by Frederick Hess, Robert Marranto and Scott Milliman

"School choice is the most widely discussed institutional reform in contemporary American education. While scholars debate the relative performance of students in schools of choice, they have generally overlooked the claim that competitive pressures will improve existing public schools. We examine the impact of educational competition on public schooling. In 1994, Arizona introduced the nation's most expansive charter school system: in the 1997-98 school year the state had 222 charter campuses. In March 1998, we surveyed elementary school teachers in traditional (non-charter) public schools in 45 Arizona school districts, asking teachers to rate behavior changes by leaders in their schools and school districts from 1994 to 1997. We find that both the degree of local charter competition and district level reliance on state aid (which follows student enrollment) have significant impacts on district behavior. The changes are concentrated in districts that were initially rated low on specific behavioral dimensions, suggesting that competition may improve low performing districts."