The third-year evaluation on the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program reports that students who received vouchers outperformed their non-voucher peers in reading. There was no difference in math.
Of course, there will be lots and lots written and said about this over the next several days, and of course this all will have a bearing on the reauthrorization of the program (which, I'm strongly in favor of).
Though this evaluation is invaluable (not to mention required under federal law), it has the effect, in my opinion, of distracting us from the more important discussion. ????Here's my take:
While I emphatically believe in school choice--meaning the right of low-income children to access safe and high-performing schools when the public schools assigned to them are dangerous and of poor quality--not every non-assigned school is stellar.
There is wide variation in the quality of traditional public schools. ????There is wide variation in the quality of charters. ????There is wide variation in the quality of private schools. ????The evaluation findings simply suggest that the quality distribution of private schools is shifted a bit to the right of the traditional public school sector.
But we shouldn't care much about the difference between the average traditional public school and the average charter or average private school. ????There's much more variation among each sector than between the average performers from each sector.
So rather than spending the next few days warring over which sector is better, why don't we all stipulate there are some great private schools, some mediocre ones, and some that aren't so hot. ????Then we can start figuring out a) how to get more kids into the best schools from each of the three sectors, and b) how to scale up these schools--again regardless of sector.
Or we could just have the same old, "My sector is marginally better on average than yours" fight...