Don’t Be Fooled: Evidence Supports School Choice
Just as Congress begins debate on renewing the federally funded school voucher program in Washington, D.C., the latest findings from the official empirical evaluation of the program have been released. They’re being widely touted as proof that vouchers don’t benefit students. But that’s not what the study says. Big shock — the media are misrepresenting the research on vouchers again. And this isn’t the only study that matters; a large body of top-quality research consistently supports vouchers.
The study reports that students who were offered a voucher had higher test scores than a control group made up of students who applied for vouchers but were not offered them because they lost a random lottery to get into the program. However, the positive results were not statistically certain, meaning we cannot be highly confident that the voucher students’ higher test scores were really the result of vouchers and not a statistical fluke.
So the study shows that the voucher students did better. It just isn’t able to say with a high level of certainty that the vouchers are the reason they did better.
Adding insult to injury, the results just barely missed the conventional cutoff for reporting results with high confidence. The standard procedure is to report results if they are 95 percent certain. The results in this study were 91 percent certain. And this is the second year in a row the D.C. results have come close to the cutoff without reaching it.
The 95 percent cutoff is just a conventional practice, like giving people drivers’ licenses at age 16. Everyone understands that teenagers do not experience a miraculous transformation at midnight on their 16th birthdays. Similarly, there’s nothing magical about 95 percent certainty. Recognizing this, many researchers will report a result as “moderately” certain if it’s at least 90 percent certain.
Of course, we must respect the fact that 91 percent is not 95 percent. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t notice that this finding is moderately certain even if it isn’t completely certain. Moses did not come down from Mount Sinai with stone tablets that said “Thou shalt completely ignore any result that is less than 95 percent statistically certain.”
This whole issue is widely misunderstood because the standard scientific term for results we can be highly confident in is “statistically significant.” That’s a misleading phrase, because statistical significance doesn’t actually measure the “significance” of the finding. It measures how sure we are that the variables being looked at in the study caused the observed changes, as opposed to a mere statistical accident.
More important, this is not the only study to compare voucher students to a control group using a random lottery. It is actually the tenth such study. And if voucher critics are going to make such a big deal out of this study, they have no complaint coming if we look at the other nine studies as well.
In all ten of the random assignment studies, voucher students had higher test scores than the control group. And this positive result achieved at least 95 percent statistical certainty in eight of the ten studies.
This means school vouchers are better supported by top-quality empirical evidence than any other education policy. There is no other approach to education that has been studied with this kind of gold-standard empirical methodology and shown such consistently positive results.
And it’s also worth remembering that the D.C. study is ongoing. Several of the previous random-assignment studies of vouchers didn’t achieve statistical certainty at first, but did so in later years. The D.C. study may yet follow where they led, achieving 95 percent certainty later.
On that subject, it’s heartening to see the Washington Post editorial board get this study right, even if the paper’s news pages didn’t. While the reporters erroneously claim that voucher students “generally did no better on reading and math tests,” when in fact they did do better, the editors correctly characterize the study results as “promising” even if they’re “no slam dunk.” The editorial urges Congress not to pull the plug just because the statistical certainty of the data barely failed to reach an arbitrary benchmark.
Of course, there is much more to be said on the subject. Vouchers have lots of other benefits besides improving education for the students who use them. For example, participating parents report that their children are now in safer schools — a chronic problem in D.C. And the program has been shown to dramatically reduce racial segregation – another chronic problem in D.C.
But as far as this particular result is concerned, the main thing to bear in mind is that it’s 91 percent certain that vouchers helped these students learn more, and it’s 100 percent certain that the positive effects of vouchers have more empirical evidence to support them than any of the available alternatives.
We are confusing fruits and veggies here! Vouchers are the way to pay for an education not the cause of an education. I’m sure there are a few schools who don’t add up to the standard imposed on them by federal offices. The teachers union will fight vouchers forever. We as a nation are behind in the world as far as educating our youth. This is a fact not a contention. Tenure is the culprit here. It’s nearly impossible to fire a teacher who is not doing their job. The newspapers are full of instances where teachers are put on “Payed Leave” when they screw up. Teachers unions require teachers to get the hours necessary for them to have their masters degree within a specific time period. Lets call it the union feeding on its self. With their masters degree it’s only fair for them to demand higher wages, right? A person can be certified up the kazoo and still be a lousy teacher. With tenure, a masters, a strong union, a fat pay check with a lot of benefits it’ll be a cold day in hell when vouchers are the way to go.
Completely quit funding the schools and fund the student. Free market system of education through competition. Teacher unions must go.
Maybe my memory serves me wrong, but I thought the problem with vouchers was that they wouldn’t begin to pay full tuition at typical private schools, thus leaving families who still oculdn’t afford it out of the running.
Is that right or did I get mixed up somewhere?
Ciscokid is right: Completely quit funding the schools and fund the student. Free market system of education through competition. Teacher unions must go.
So must administrators who eat up a lot of public education money.
Marva Collins, a truly great teacher, became frustrated with the bureaucracy of the Chicago public school system and started her own school. Her Black ghetto students were featured on 60 Minutes and the Modern Library Classics they were reading: Homer, Thackeray, et al.
Two TV movies starring Cicely Tyson covered her career and the story of a football player on scholarship who wrecked his knee and lost his college scholarship because he didn’t know how to read. So long as he could win football games no one cared. Tells a lot about the priorities of “educators.”
I wish Newt would put an online petition for school vouchers.
It would be nice if more people realized this.
It seems so crazy that people don’t support vouchers. It makes sense on so many levels.
It is extremely disconcerting that educators refuse to look at alternatives in school districts where there are significant problems. More accurately is they will look at alternatives so long as they include more money, more bureaucracy, & only plans the establishment educators have approved. In short, its a government bureaucratic system that feeds itself by demanding more & more of the taxpayer, while delivering only ultimatums & demands upon all but the teachers & the district systems that are failing the students.
Americans are experiencing another attack by pro unionists & with a Democrat in the White House & a Democratic majority in the Congress, you can bet unions will get everything they demand & then some. But, the kids will get the same old crap. In the end, it will still all be blamed on, not enough money!
That the media have joined in this effort makes them even more despicable than I had even thought! Sacrificing the kids for political gain, is simply reprehensible. Worse is that those who suffer the most are always inner city &/or minority kids. Any wonder why there is a racial divide in America? We have a system & enablers who continue to promote the systems that cause such divisions!
Excellent article! The school issue is where we see most clearly the divide between the clear will of heartland America and the grudging resistance of the mean-spirited alienated coastal elites. Keep telling it like it is!
I believe there’s also a way to statistically combine surveys, which in this case, would tend to increase the level of certainty.
My sister was involved in a situation that illustrates the stupidity of the current educational system. She’s an experienced teacher in a suburban Kansas City school district. A middle school student of hers threatened to “cut her throat” when she asked him to move to another seat. All that was done by the administration was to suspend the student for five days. The teacher’s union said that the administration was following their procedure and there was nothing further that they could do.
My sister was fortunate to find a position in another district. This has been a recurring problem in this district for years because the year before a large number of my sister’s colleagues resigned over similar circumstances.
Now the district has hired my sister’s replacement. He is a teacher with a documented history of inappropriate behavior with his high school students, but the principal hired him anyway because she was sure that he wouldn’t have and interest in middle school girls. And besides, she said, “He’s cute”. I’M NOT KIDDING!!!
If we had vouchers, this school would have to deal with their problems or cease to exist!