Ron Amundson’s Political Blog

The program was killed off in the house yesterday as part of the budget vote. There are some detailed studies out, and there is a ton of spin. I decided to take a look at the academic part of the studies to see if I could sift through things a bit.

From National Review Online:

Academic researchers evaluating the program have found that parents of voucher students are more satisfied with their children’s schools. Initial evidence suggests that children who were offered vouchers are performing better academically than their peers who were not, though the results so far aren’t statistically significant.

More satisfied parents and test scores that appear to be rising — not bad for a government program. Why, then, are congressional leaders so intent on terminating this relatively tiny expenditure?

The results of the first couple years dont seem to indicate much of a difference in academic performance.

After 2 years, there was no statistically significant difference in test scores in general between students who were offered an OSP scholarship and students who were not offered a scholarship. Overall, those in the treatment and control groups were performing at comparable levels in mathematics and reading.

The main difference is that after 1 year, the non-SINI and higher performing groups of students appeared to experience statistically significant positive impacts on math achievement, while in the second year the impacts were on reading achievement. Adjustments for multiple comparisons suggest that both sets of results may be false discoveries.

Now, whats goofy, is that in some cases, some research shows that private schools do provide a better education than public schools. Certainly in other areas of the country, voucher programs have shown significant success. Then add in the description of the public schools in Washington DC…

Despite the system’s spending more than $14,000 each year per student, barely half of all students ever graduate high school. One out of every eight D.C. students reported being assaulted or injured with a deadly weapon during a recent school year. That’s equal to the percentage of D.C. eighth-graders who scored “proficient” in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

I went whoa on this, so I had to look it up, and the are correct… scary.

And if all the facts are on the table, something doesnt add up at all, thus there has to be something seriously skewed here. Any private school that has such a low performance in reading would loose all their students in a flash. However, the NAEP is likely a drastically different evaluation, than what was used in the study.

Some possible explanations (its my guesses, no data to back them up, just my thoughts:)
1. The public schools taught to the tests used in the study, where as the private schools focused on a well rounded education.
2. Standardized testing in K-12 edu is pretty worthless as a sole metric of comparison.
3. Involved parents traditionally have more to do with education than funding, Scholarship students parents would be involved, so performance should be better. Why doesnt the study show this, ie parental approval is very high, but student performance is comparable.
4. Two years of data is too little to make a call.
5. The transition in schools may have caused a temporary drop in achievement.

I think it was a bad call to end this program at this time. It was supposed to run through 2012, and then there would hopefully be enough solid data to make the call. Granted preliminary data is not very good, but that could be due to other factors. In fact the next eval will be out this summer, at least they could have moved forward with this for another year. By then, the reports could have been looked at with a fine tooth comb. If it was indeed not effective, perhaps they could find out why, ie what are the other factors contributing to this. As a anti standardized test guy, obviously I blame the measurement methodology, but I really would like to understand what the real deal is. Also, to upend kids education over ideology, which does appear to be the case, is way uncool. I dont care which party does it… kids education has to be a priority, not the parents, not the unions, not the school district, nor Washington ideology.