“School choice” advocates say school choice works . . . um, pretty well

by David Safier

This is one of my favorite education pieces recently. It's an Ed Week (subscription only) opinion piece titled What Research Says About School Choice. The conclusion? School choice works . . . um, pretty well. Not terrific, just, um, pretty well.

The "nine scholars and analysts" who signed onto the study are quite a bunch. Three are from the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Two are aligned with the Goldwater Institute. One of those (my favorite Fools Gold miner, Matthew Ladner) is currently working for Jeb Bush.

Another of the signees, Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, is a school choice advocate who once wrote in a moment of honesty, after a study of Milwaukee vouchers showed it had no significant effect on student achievement, that choice advocates should stop pushing the idea that vouchers boost achievement.

The University of Arkansas School of Education, home to my good friends Patrick Wolf and Jay Greene [Note: Both of them were among the "nine scholars and analysts" in the opinion piece above], yesterday released new research showing that students in Milwaukee’s two-decade-old voucher program (the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, MPCP) “scored at similar levels as their peers not participating in the school choice program.”

Wolf, who has led this effort as well as the federally endorsed evaluation of the D.C. voucher program, summarized, “Voucher students are showing average rates of achievement gain similar to their public school peers.” Translation: when it comes to test scores, students with vouchers are performing no differently than other kids. (It is worth noting that MPCP students are being educated more cheaply than district school students.)

What to make of the results? First off, 20 years in, it’s hard to argue that the nation’s biggest and most established voucher experiment has “worked” if the measure is whether vouchers lead to higher reading and math scores. Happily, that’s never been my preferred metric for structural reforms . . .

Hess said basically, OK, so voucher students don't do any better than similar students in public schools. So what? There are other, um, good reasons . . . um, good enough reasons . . . why we should push vouchers. Now Hess has signed on to an opinion piece saying the Milwaukee vouchers and other choice programs work . . . um, pretty well.

Even with all those pro choice folks, the best they could come up with was . . . um, pretty well.