Vouchers in the Bayou: The Effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program on Student Achievement After 2 Years

Mills, Jonathan N.; Wolf, Patrick J.

doi:10.3102/0162373717693108

Cited by 61 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Third, we examined the effects of a voucher program that operates within a different context from other programs, whereby many private schools were participating in statewide testing prior to the implementation of the voucher program. Finally, unlike other statewide studies that cover a shorter time frame (Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, & Walters, ; Figlio & Karbownik, ; Mills & Wolf, ), we examined the impact for students who have received a voucher to attend private schools up to four years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Achievement Effects for Students in Upper Elementary and Middle School

Waddington¹,

Berends²

2018

J Policy Anal Manage

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This paper examines the impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program on student achievement for low-income students in upper elementary and middle school who used a voucher to transfer from public to private schools during the first four years of the program. We analyzed student-level longitudinal data from public and private schools taking the same statewide standardized assessment. Overall, voucher students experienced an average achievement loss of 0.15 SDs in mathematics during their first year of attending a private school compared with matched students who remained in a public school. This loss persisted regardless of the length of time spent in a private school. In English/Language Arts, we did not observe statistically meaningful effects. Although school vouchers aim to provide greater educational opportunities for students, the goal of improving the academic performance of low-income students who use a voucher to move to a private school has not yet been realized in Indiana. C 2018 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Achievement Effects for Students in Upper Elementary and Middle School

Waddington¹,

Berends²

2018

J Policy Anal Manage

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“…This latter test complements work by Mills and Wolf (2017) that attempts to shed light on the issue of potential "test familiarity bias" in the context of a rigorously designed evaluation of the Louisiana Scholarship Program. By taking advantage of the fact that different grade levels relied on different accountability assessments in some years, some of which were more aligned with the state curriculum than others, Mills and Wolf decompose the negative impact of Louisiana's voucher program to identify what proportion of that impact can be attributed to the specific assessment used.…”

mentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Proposals to subsidize private education can be traced back to John Stuart Mill (1869), who argued that compulsory education should be compelled by the state but not provided by that entity. To avoid the inevitable conflicts that would arise over what should be taught and how, Mill proposed breaking the financing of education from its provision.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of the Effects of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program on Student Achievement

2020

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The North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program is a private school voucher program that provides state-funded vouchers worth up to $4,200 to eligible students entering kindergarten through 12th grade. Because the public and private school sectors administer different assessments, we recruited approximately 700 students to take a common, nationally normed, standardized test. Matching on baseline achievement and rich demographic data, we use a quasi-experimental inverse propensity weighting approach to maximize comparability between the public and private school student samples. Our preferred specification examines first-year effects for new Opportunity Scholarship students, revealing positive estimates of .36 SD in math and .44 SD in language; there is no effect on reading scores. Results for renewal students are statistically significant in language scores only. In further analyses, we estimate separate effects for private schools that regularly administer another version of the assessment used in this study, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. We conclude by discussing policy implications.

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“…The first experimental evaluations in the world to find negative effects of a private school choice program on student achievement were of the Louisiana voucher program (Abdulkadiroğlu, Pathak, and Walters, ; Mills, ; Mills and Wolf, , ). Abdulkadiroğlu, Pathak, and Walters () found that lower‐quality private schools—as measured by student enrollment—were more likely to participate in the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Regulations on Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence from Florida

DeAngelis

Burke

Wolf

2019

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective. This is the first experimental evaluation of the effects of various regulations on the willingness of private school leaders to participate in a hypothetical school voucher program. Methods. We use surveys to randomly assign different regulations to 2,958 private school leaders in Florida and ask them whether they would participate in a new private school choice program during the following school year. Results. We received responses from 327 private school leaders. Relative to no additional regulations, our most conservative models find that open-enrollment mandates reduce the likelihood that private schools are certain to participate by 17 percentage points or 70 percent. State standardized testing requirements reduce the likelihood that private schools are certain to participate by 12 percentage points or 46 percent. We find no evidence to suggest that the prohibition of copayment affects participation overall. We find limited evidence to suggest that regulations are more likely to deter higher-quality schools.as measured by tuition levels and enrollment trends. Conclusion. These results suggest that various regulations of private school choice programs come with costs and perhaps unintended consequences.

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Vouchers in the Bayou: The Effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program on Student Achievement After 2 Years

Cited by 61 publications

References 25 publications

Impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Achievement Effects for Students in Upper Elementary and Middle School

Impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Achievement Effects for Students in Upper Elementary and Middle School

An Analysis of the Effects of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program on Student Achievement

The Effects of Regulations on Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence from Florida

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