Don’t Believe the Spin: Milwaukee Voucher Program a Success
Descriptive Statistics:
Comparing two groups in the same district that will all be feeling the effects of the vouchers is a failed experiment. You taint the control group the moment you give the vouchers out in the same area. It’s bad science. (NOTE: The first study is failed science by the samples it took.)
On the opposite end of things, taking into account the three groups: Test(those with vouchers), residual(those in the same area as vouchers), and control (those in a completely different area with the same or similar demographics) you create a real study with real results. THIS is real science. (NOTE: The second study did not go far enough in utilizing a control group. It did, however, use comparative statistics from previous years. It’s better than study 1, but still lacks solid qualitative data.)
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I’ve been a fan of putting this to a legitimate test for a long time. It’s good to see people giving it a shot, but I don’t think the study has gone on long enough, not had the control group positioned appropriately for a “hard facts” legitimate test. Like others have said. Wait the full five years for the empirical data.
