Due to the Trump administration's strong support, "school choice" has surged as a topic of debate among policymakers. It refers to a market-based strategy of improving public education. By providing parents with options regarding how to educate their child (e.g. private schools, charter schools, home schooling, etc.), underperforming public schools would be pressured to innovate and restructure themselves in order to keep their students and continue running. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a strong proponent of vouchers, a school choice system where parents may reroute the public funding tied to their child towards a private school tuition. Last month, Jonathan N. Mills and Patrick J. Wolf from the University of Arkansas, with the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, published a study on the effect of such a system on the students of Louisiana. The results are not promising for Secretary DeVos and other voucher advocates. Louisiana's voucher program is called the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). In 2012, the LSP's pilot year, 5,296 received a scholarship and became subjects of the study. In the first year after transferring to a private school, researchers found that students' performance in both ELA and math dropped significantly. Scores rose gradually over the following two years. However, there was no significant difference from how the students performed in the year prior to LSP participation. Moreover, after the third LSP year, "voucher students did about the same on state English and math tests compared with similar students at public schools." Such results bring to question whether the LSP positively affected students in terms of academic performance. This study also provides strong evidence that, from a research perspective, states should hold private schools to the same accountability standards as their public counterparts. Louisiana requires that the state's criterion-based assessments (LEAP and iLEAP) are administered to both public school students and students admitted to private schools via vouchers. Without this policy in place, it would have been difficult for Mills and Wolf to compare the academic achievements of voucher students before and after participating in the LSP. Good longitudinal data was provided by the fact that LSP students and public school students were not taking different tests, each with vastly different sets of standards, at their respective schools.
With such usable longitudinal data, states can pause private schools from continuing to voucher in students if academic improvements are not shown. For example, Indiana has a similar accountability system as Louisiana, where all schools, both private and public, are given an A-F rating using state assessment scores, student growth, and college and career readiness. Private schools with a rating of D or lower are prohibited from vouchering in more students until a rating of C or above is reached. The issue of school choice is extremely broad and can be examined from a variety of angles, from admission policies, and types of courses available to students to its federal funding. It will be interesting to keep an eye on how Congress decides to fund the White House's proposed $250 million pilot program for school vouchers. Although the current House appropriations bill excludes that amount entirely, if the final bill does fund vouchers, states should be encouraged to carefully review how they hold private schools accountable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |