As private school scholarship (voucher) programs sweep the nation, debate over their impacts on students remains heated. Critics routinely claim they have negative effects, while advocates call the programs a win-win for students attending both public and private schools. To inform these debates, researchers have spent countless hours studying the “competitive effects” of choice programs—the impacts of private schools on public school performance—as well as “participant effects,” or the direct effect of these programs on scholarship students.
Into this milieu, nearly a decade ago, the Fordham Institute published an in-depth look at Ohio’s private-school scholarship known as EdChoice. The analysis, which focused on its earliest years, yielded mixed results. On the one hand, the program led to a slight uptick in public schools’ performance by putting healthy competitive pressure on them to improve. On the other hand, however, the study uncovered negative impacts on scholarship students’ state test scores.
While expressing concern about the participant findings, my colleague Chad Aldis and I wrote in the report foreword, “The present report breaks important new ground, but it is by no means the final word on EdChoice. We still have much to learn, including whether vouchers impact non-testing outcomes such as postsecondary success.”
We urged caution, as we suspected that private schools might put students on stronger long-term trajectories that wouldn’t be captured by short-term impacts on test scores. Perhaps private schools strengthen student character and other non-cognitive skills—things that could increase students’ likelihood of attending college but not necessarily show up on a test. It’s also possible that private schools had curricula less connected to state assessments than public schools. Loose alignment—not learning losses that bear on postsecondary success—may have driven the disappointing results. Lastly, the study, for methodological reasons, focused on subsample of students attending (or who would have otherwise attended) public schools right around the scholarship eligibility margin. Perhaps something was missed when the analysis was restricted in this way.
Without research on the long-run outcomes of EdChoice students, all this remained speculation. That is, until this week. A new Urban Institute report provides hard evidence about the program’s longer-run impacts. The analysis was conducted by Matthew Chingos, David Figlio and Krzysztof Karbownik, the latter two of whom undertook the prior EdChoice study. The participant effects are, indeed, much better than what we observe using state test data and with what appears to be a larger sample of students.
To carry out this study, the analysts track the college enrollment and completion rates of students who participated in EdChoice between 2008 and 2014. To create apples-to-apples comparisons, they compare scholarship students to very similar pupils attending public schools (based on demographic variables and achievement on state tests). The postsecondary data cover in- and out-of-state colleges, as well as two- and four-year institutions. The study includes 6,243 and 1,650 EdChoice participants in the college enrollment and completion analyses, respectively.
Key results are as follows.
- EdChoice boosted college enrollment. Among scholarship recipients, 64 percent enrolled in any college—two- or four-year—versus 48 percent of their closely matched public school peers. When focusing on four-year colleges only, a greater proportion of EdChoice users enrolled in such institutions compared to their public school peers (45 versus 30 percent).
- EdChoice increased college completion. 23 percent of scholarship participants earned a bachelor’s degree within six years of high school graduation versus 15 percent of their closely matched public school peers.[1]
Figure 1: College enrollment and completion rates, EdChoice participants versus similar public school students
In terms of impacts by specific student groups, the study finds the college-enrollment boost was stronger for Black students and males participating in EdChoice. But no group differences were discovered for college completion. While deemed “suggestive evidence” by the study authors, students who participated in EdChoice for at least four years registered stronger college-going and completion rates than those who stayed in the program for shorter durations.
In addition to gauging long-term participant effects, the report also revisits the competitive effects of EdChoice—this time on public school students’ college outcomes. Here, the results are consistent with prior research on EdChoice, showing modest, positive impacts on public schools. When comparing students attending very similar public schools—some exposed to greater private school competition via EdChoice and others not—the analysts find that the program led to a 3 percentage point increase in public school students’ college enrollment and a 6 percentage point bump in bachelor’s degree attainment.
When viewed through the lens of state test scores, recent studies about private school programs’ effectiveness have yielded disappointing results. Yet a next generation of research on postsecondary outcomes—this one from Ohio, plus studies from Florida and Milwaukee—paints a more promising picture about the longer-term benefits of private school choice. Yes, we still have much to learn about private-school programs, including how they can be designed to maximize benefits for students and families. But for now, let’s chalk one up for the theory that choice programs are a win-win all around.
[1] No results were reported that cover associate degree attainment.
