EdChoice vouchers have helped, not hurt, traditional public schools

Try saying it with us: “Choice and competition are good.” Don’t take our word alone. On the left, President Joe Biden said:

The heart of American capitalism is a simple idea: open and fair competition—that means that if your companies want to win your business, they have to go out and they have to up their game. . . . Fair competition is why capitalism has been the world’s greatest force for prosperity and growth.

And on the right, President George W. Bush stated:

Free market capitalism is the engine of social mobility—the highway to the American Dream. . . . If you seek economic growth, if you seek opportunity, if you seek social justice and human dignity, the free market system is the way to go.

Their remarks, of course, refer to economic systems writ large, while the report that follows is about primary and secondary education. Even so, in the world of K–12 education, choice and competition are also the way to go. Choice empowers families to select the schools that best fit the needs of their kids, be they district options or alternatives such as public charter schools or private schools. No longer are parents shackled to a singular, residentially assigned, district-operated school that may or may not educate their children to their full potential.

Competition—the other side of the same coin—encourages schools to pay closer attention to the needs of parents and students who, if dissatisfied, can vote with their feet and head for the exits. This sort of “market discipline” helps to promote productive habits and effective practices across both the public and private school sectors.

National polling shows that strong majorities of Americans agree with the intuition behind expanded school choice. Rigorous analyses also reveal benefits to students when states foster choice-friendly environments. Studies on the “competitive effects” of choice programs (both public charter and private school voucher) in states such as Arizona, Florida, and Louisiana have uncovered academic gains for students who stay in traditional public schools. A sweeping national study from our Fordham Institute colleagues in Washington, D.C., found that district and charter students make stronger academic progress when they live in metro areas with more options.

Closer to home, we published a 2016 study by Drs. David Figlio and Krzysztof Karbownik finding that Ohio’s private school voucher program, known as EdChoice, lifted achievement in district schools during its very first years (2006–07 to 2008–09).

So what brings us here again?

In short, the detractors haven’t gone away, the self-interest of the “education establishment” remains strong, and accusations continue to fly that choice programs harm traditional public schools. Here in Ohio, the latest incarnation is the “Vouchers Hurt Ohio” coalition, a group of lobbyists, district administrators, and school boards that have sued the state in an effort to eliminate EdChoice, the state’s largest voucher program, which now serves some 60,000 students. Presently pending before a Franklin County judge, their lawsuit claims that EdChoice hurts district finances and results in more segregated public schools. Though not expressly stated, their claims imply that district students themselves may also be harmed academically.

The plaintiffs build their case around basic school funding and demographic statistics. Their numbers, however, cannot prove cause and effect. For instance, as evidence of segregation, they cite data from the Lima School District, which enrolled 54 percent students of color pre-EdChoice, a number that has since risen to 65 percent. Their implication is that EdChoice is responsible, but they ignore even the possibility that this trend could reflect larger demographic shifts that are entirely unrelated to vouchers (e.g., White families exiting the district and/or minority families moving in). Unless one conducts rigorous analyses that separate the impacts of EdChoice from other factors, superficial statistics are apt to mislead.

To conduct a more careful investigation of the impacts of EdChoice, we turned to Stéphane Lavertu of The Ohio State University. He is a fine scholar, with a strong track record of evaluating various school choice and accountability initiatives in the Buckeye State. His work includes a widely cited national evaluation of charter school performance for the RAND Corporation, along with numerous studies on local school governance and policy that have appeared in peer-reviewed academic outlets such as the Journal of Public Economics, American Political Science Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

The truth of the matter turns out to be far different than the critics’ claims. In studying the state’s performance-based EdChoice program[1] from inception to the year just prior to the pandemic (2006–07 to 2018–19), Dr. Lavertu uncovers the following:

• Improved district achievement. Importantly, he finds that EdChoice did not harm district students and, in fact, led to modest achievement gains. Although affected districts still tend to struggle overall academically, these incremental improvements suggest that a more competitive environment may have helped focus districts on academic success. The results here are consistent with other studies, including the aforementioned Ohio analysis by Figlio and Karbownik, showing a positive influence of choice programs on district performance. Yes, that is right: a positive influence on district achievement, even as some students depart for private alternatives.

• Reduced district segregation. Due to their geographic boundaries and residential patterns, Ohio school districts were highly segregated long before vouchers existed. Fortunately, EdChoice has helped to lessen district segregation—no doubt reflecting the strong participation of Black and Hispanic students in the program (55 percent of voucher recipients in 2018–19). With such large numbers of Black and Hispanic students moving to the private school sector, the likelihood that public school students are in a racially “isolated” school has declined.

• No impact on district expenditures per pupil. Contrary to the critics’ chief allegation—that vouchers “drain money” from districts—EdChoice does not decrease the per-pupil expenditures of districts. The neutral fiscal impact should be expected. While seeing reductions in state aid when students participate in choice programs, districts experience an increase in local funding per pupil, because those taxpayer dollars do not “follow” voucher (or charter) students to their schools of choice.

The available data did not allow Dr. Lavertu to draw clear conclusions about the causal impact of income-based EdChoice, which bases voucher eligibility on family income.[2] That being said, the evidence—circumstantial as it may be—indicates that this newer program (launched in 2013–14) has no adverse impact on districts.

“The sky is falling,” cry the Chicken Little critics of Ohio’s choice programs. But they are mistaken. District students are not left as “collateral damage” when parents have more education options and decide to pursue them. Quite the contrary: the increased competition seems to stir traditional public schools to undertake actions that benefit district students. For judges, journalists, and Ohioans everywhere, we say this: don’t believe the critics’ hype. And for Ohio policymakers, we say: keep working to expand quality educational choices. Free and open competition is known to fuel economic growth. In the same way, it can also drive excellence, innovation, and greater productivity in our public and private schools.

NOTE: This piece is the foreword to our recent report The Ohio EdChoice Program’s impact on school district enrollments, finances, and academics by Stéphane Lavertu and John J. Gregg. The full report can be read or downloaded here.