The lively debate over a proposed federal voucher program for needy children in the District of Columbia has re-surfaced a familiar issue. In today's guest editorial, Andy Rotherham calls it ensuring "accountability" for private schools receiving voucher-bearing students. In the Sunday Washington Post, it's described benignly as "comparing the progress of voucher-funded students with that of children who are not in the program."
Most people know that prior research is incomplete and thus inconclusive regarding the effectiveness of voucher programs in boosting pupil achievement. That's due largely to the fact that there's never been an adequate experiment coupled with a well-designed study of its effectiveness. Unfortunately, the proposed D.C. program will not be a true experiment, either-no randomized assignment of children to "treatment" and "control" groups, for example-so rigorous social scientists will never be entirely satisfied with the evidence it produces.
Still, the proposed program holds huge significance for the national voucher debate. It's important to learn all we can from it while ensuring that (in the late Johnny Cash's hallmark phrase) it "walks the line" between accountability and freedom.
Those who hate vouchers and want to halt the D.C. program (teacher unions, for example, and People for the American Way) are using "accountability" to kill it. They say the accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind must apply to participating private schools, including state standards, tests, "adequate yearly progress," and a cascade of interventions. Private schools simply won't succumb to this-and they shouldn't, for then they would forfeit the essential characteristics of freedom and uniqueness that make them worth attending in the first place. Beware of "accountability" turning into a Trojan horse. And laugh or cry at the sight of groups that decry NCLB in other contexts now citing it as a bulwark of public education-when the voucher votes are close and it helps their side to wrap themselves in the accountability flag.
Yet it's important to monitor the academic progress of voucher students and compare it with more-or-less similar youngsters in public schools. This can be done, albeit imperfectly, via a plan under consideration at the U.S. Department of Education: track D.C. public-school students via their scores on the SAT-9 tests that the District already uses and track voucher students via their scores on the Terra Nova test that many local private schools (including those of the Washington Archdiocese) already use. Comparing one national standardized test with another isn't perfect-but it's serviceable, whether one uses percentile rankings or what analysts call "normal curve equivalents."
What about private schools that use neither the SAT-9 nor the Terra Nova? Let them agree to administer one or the other, at least to the kids with vouchers, or forego participation in the program. And make sure that a few ace researchers are involved from the get-go in structuring all this and analyzing the data that result.
Test scores are by no means all one wants to know about the effects of a voucher program. (Student turnover, attrition and completion rates are examples of other important information.) But they're the most sensitive territory and the one where voucher supporters need to make reasonable accommodation with the demand for evidence and accountability-and opponents need to be unmasked as hostile Greek warriors hiding inside the accountability "horse" that Troy's leaders are being cajoled to let through the gates.
"Voucher Plan Lacks Method of Assessment," by Justin Blum, Washington Post, September 14, 2003
"Vouching for children," by George F. Will, Washington Post, September 14, 2003
"Give poor students a choice," by William Raspberry, Washington Post, September 15, 2003
