A First Report Card On Vouchers

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A team of researchers from Indiana University that evaluated the program for the state of Ohio last fall found that vouchers were a mixed bag. Students attended classes that were, on average, smaller by three students. On the other hand, public schools had teachers with better credentials. They were more likely to have done postcollege work and had an average of five more years of teaching experience. In the end, the researchers concluded, class size and teacher qualifications canceled each other out.

The test scores were perhaps even more surprising. Voucher proponents have long argued that if students were allowed to leave failing public schools--for better-run and more disciplined private and parochial schools--their performance would improve dramatically. But the Indiana study found only minor differences between voucher students and public school students on a standardized fourth-grade academic-achievement test. Voucher students scored better than public school students in language and science, but the differences were, the study found, "relatively small." In the other areas tested--reading, math, social studies and "total battery"--voucher students did no better than their public school counterparts. In fact, the only students who really stood out--for their weak performance--were those in the city's two Hope academies. The test scores of these students, who are the poster children for vouchers in Cleveland, were not just lower, according to the study, but "significantly and substantially lower" than those of public school students and of voucher students in other private schools.

Voucher supporters fault the study's methodology, attacking everything from the impartiality of the researchers to the conditions under which the fourth-graders were tested. Lydia Harris, a reading specialist at Hope Central Academy, says the examiners who came to the school "didn't have a clue," and administered the test during children's nap time. She also suspects the State Department of Education, which commissioned the study, may have wanted vouchers to come off badly because its bureaucratic inertia makes it resist systemic reforms like vouchers. Even the study's authors concede their results don't necessarily discredit vouchers. They note that the small edge displayed by voucher students in two of the six test areas could grow over time to a more significant advantage. And they say the Hope academies' weak showing could have many explanations, including growing pains associated with starting a new school.

Still, public school backers seized on the hard numbers in the Indiana study as proof that vouchers can't deliver on their lofty claims. "These results are absolutely astounding," says Richard DeColibus, president of the Cleveland teachers' union. "But no one takes any notice of it because it goes against their preconceived notions that private schools teach better." The fact that the Indiana study didn't give second thoughts to voucher supporters is proof, he says, that their foremost concern is not children, but promoting a conservative education agenda. "Why would they want to expand a system that is demonstrably a failure?" DeColibus asks. "Because it's about ideology."