Better Education for ALL Students

• Students who exercise choice perform better
• Schools that face competition perform better

Empowered parents making choices based on what is best for their kids will motivate all schools, public and private, to improve.  In our current public education system, schools receive funding for each student regardless of how well they meet each student's needs.

With school choice, parents (and not bureaucrats or unions) will have the final say in deciding whether or not their child's school meets their needs. If a school is not satisfactory, parents will take their kid and the funding with them.  This means education funding will flow only to the best schools.

This not only motivates existing schools to improve, but will also encourage the creation of new schools designed to meet specific needs.  As a result, parents will have a greater variety of schools to choose from to meet the unique needs of each of their children. 

As existing school choice programs across the US show, this results in a better education for ALL children.

Students who exercise choice perform better

The academic effects of school choice have been extensively researched, and the findings are unambiguously positive. Voucher programs have been studied seven times using “random assignment,” the same method used in medical trials. Students who won a random lottery and received vouchers were compared to students who lost the same lottery and returned to public schools. All seven studies find that the voucher students’ test scores were significantly higher than those of the students who returned to public schools. Numerous studies using other methods confirm this finding.

Milwaukee’s voucher program improves academic achievement

• A 1998 Harvard random-assignment study found that after four years, Milwaukeevoucher students gained 11 points in math and 6 points in reading compared to the control group.
• A 1998 Princeton random-assignment study found that in four years Milwaukee voucher students improved more than the control group by 8 points in math.
• In a 2004 study, Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute found that in 2003, private schools participating in theMilwaukee voucher program had a graduation rate of 64%, while Milwaukee’s public high schools had a graduation rate of 36%.

Privately funded voucher programs also improve academic achievement

• A 2002 Harvard random-assignment study found that after three years, African-American voucher students in New York improved more than the control group incombined reading and math scores by 9.2 percentile points.
• A 2003 random-assignment study by researchers from Harvard, Columbia and Johns Hopkins found that after only one year in the program New York voucher students improved more than the control group by 4.7 percentile points in math.
• A 2002 Harvard random-assignment study found that after three years, African-American voucher students in Dayton improved more than the control groupincombined reading and math scores by 6.5 percentile points.
• A 2001 Manhattan Institute random-assignment study found that after only one year, voucher students in Charlotte improved more than the control group in combined reading and math scores by 6 percentile points.

Schools exposed to choice perform better

A strong body of evidence shows that school choice improves outcomes at public schools. If all schools compete for students, public schools have a powerful incentive to improve in order to prevent students from walking out the door. In fact, not one empirical study anywhere in the U.S. has found that public schools got worse when exposed to school choice, while a significant body of studies has found that they improve:

Vouchers in Florida improve failing public schools

• A 2004 Manhattan Institute study published in the journalEducation Next found that low-performing schools facing the threat of vouchers made significantly greater test-score gains than similarly low-performing schools not facing the voucher threat. Schools where vouchers were actually offered showed the biggest improvements, outpacing other Florida schools by a full 15 points.
• A Cornell University study published in the same issue of that journal found that schools given F grades under the A+ system made greater-than-average gains, while F schools under Florida’s earlier system (with no vouchersmade no gains relative to other schools.
• A 2005 Harvard University study confirms that students in failing schools under the A+ program made superior test score gains.

Milwaukee’s voucher program has also improved public schools

• A 2001 Harvard University study found that public schools more exposed to voucher competition had test score gains that outpaced other public schools by 10.2 percentile points in math and 9.3 points in language over three years.
• A 2003 Manhattan Institute study found that fourth grade test score gains were much bigger in schools where more students were eligible for vouchers, such that a school where 100% of students were eligible would have test score gains 15 points higher than a school with only 50% eligible.

Other voucher programs improve public schools

• A 2002 Friedman Foundation study found that under century-old “town tuitioning” voucher programs in Maine and Vermont, public schools closer to tuitioning towns had better test scores.If a town one mile away from a school decided to tuition its students, the percentage of its students passing the state test would increase by 12 percent.
• A 2003 Manhattan Institute study found that a San Antonio school district facing competition from a privately funded voucher program outperformed 85% of Texas districts in its achievement gains.

For a more extensive summary of scholarly, school choice research, see Survey of School Choice Research