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School Vouchers

Voucher programs are limited to just a few states.
Taxpayer-funded voucher programs are operating in Florida, Ohio, Utah, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.
  • Florida’s Opportunity Scholarship program offered vouchers to students attending schools that were graded “F” by the state in two of the previous four years. This program was found unconstitutional by Florida’s Supreme Court but continues to operate while the decision is appealed. The McKay program offers vouchers to students with disabilities who are dissatisfied with their public schools at a cost of $72 million to taxpayers. Parents who accept vouchers waive their rights under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act—and the private schools their children attend are not required to employ special education teachers, comply with any accountability standards, or evaluate improvement or success rates.1
  • In Cleveland, almost 6,000 students use vouchers at a cost of about $18 million. The program’s funding comes in large part at the expense of Cleveland’s public schools—$12 million of State Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid has been diverted to the voucher program.2
  • In 2006, enrollment in the Milwaukee voucher program reached its statutory cap when more than 15,000 students enrolled at an annual cost of about $96 million.
  • Utah enacted a program in 2005 that provides vouchers worth about $5,500 to students with disabilities. In its second year, fewer than half of the enrolled students had attended public school the prior year.
  • The first federally funded program provides vouchers to low-income students in the District of Columbia. Fewer than 1,400 vouchers were awarded by lottery—and 21.3 percent were not used. Another 20 percent had attended private school the previous year. Only six percent of the voucher lottery winners actually fit Congress’ criteria of having attended failing public schools.3
No credible study has demonstrated that vouchers improve student performance.
The official study of Cleveland’s voucher program found no difference in achievement for voucher students compared to students in the public schools. By fifth grade, public school students did as well as the voucher students. Voucher students were also less likely to be African American and low-income.4 State evaluation of the Milwaukee program was discontinued in 1995.5 A controversial study of privately-funded vouchers in New York City, Dayton, Ohio and the District of Columbia claimed a 6.3 percent gain in test scores by African American students,6 but one of the companies hired to gather the research publicly rebutted that conclusion. Reanalysis of the data confirmed that the claims are insupportable, and that vouchers had no statistically significant impact on student achievement.7
Vouchers do not provide “school choice,” because private school admissions offices retain the choice of which students to admit or reject.
Students are often unable or ineligible to attend many private schools that accept vouchers due to long waiting lists and restrictive admissions standards based on academic performance, religion, gender, disability and other factors.
Vouchers do not pay the full cost of many private schools.
Vouchers will not cover the full cost of the more expensive and elite private schools—$10,000 to $20,000 per year—which decline to participate in programs that require them to accept the voucher as complete tuition payment. Moreover, the cost of private education is much more than tuition. Parents must also pay for transportation, uniforms, books and other expenses. Many, if not most, low- and middle-income parents are unable to afford these costs, rendering the promise of “choice” illusory.
Private schools that accept vouchers are not held to the same standards of accountability as public schools.
Voucher proposals rarely demand accountability for the quality of education students receive and, according to a U.S. Department of Education report, many private schools would not participate in a voucher program if it required them to make changes in admissions, student testing, curriculum, or religious training.8 The federal No Child Left Behind law does not apply to private schools.
Americans want public money to be used for public schools instead of for private school vouchers.
The 2005 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll found that the number of Americans who support the diversion of public funds for private school tuition fell to 38 percent.9 A meta-analysis of polling data confirmed that vouchers are the least popular of all proposals to improve education, garnering less than half as much support as tutoring and remedial support for students or professional development for teachers.10 In the most important gauge of public opinion, voters have consistently rejected school voucher initiatives. In 2000, California and Michigan voters turned back voucher proposals by two-to-one margins. Since 1972, all attempts to create state voucher programs by referendum have failed.
Despite a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, school vouchers violate most state constitutions.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the use of publicly-funded vouchers to attend private religious schools was not a violation of the U.S. Constitution. However, state constitutions often contain stricter prohibitions on the practice. Nearly every state constitution (all but LA, ME and NC) limits state support of religious institutions. Thirty-six state constitutions expressly prohibit the diversion of public funds to religious schools. Fifteen states also require a uniform system of public education—interpreted by Florida’s Supreme Court to prohibit vouchers. Accordingly, the constitutionality of vouchers is in question.

This policy brief relies in large part on information from the National Education Association.

Endnotes
  1. National School Boards Association, “Florida’s Voucher Programs,” 2006.
  2. Ohio State Board of Education, “Budget and Policy Recommendations of the State Board of Education, 2006-2007 Biennium,” December 2004.
  3. Sewell Chan, “Many D.C. Vouchers Go Unused, 290 Students Forgo $7,500 Tuition Grants,” Washington Post, September 2004.
  4. Kim Metcalf et al., “Evaluation of the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program, Technical Report 1998-2003,” Indiana University, October 2004.
  5. John Witte et al., “Fifth Year Report: Milwaukee Parental Choice Program,” University of Wisconsin, 1995.
  6. Howell, Wolf, Peterson and Campbell, “Test-score effects of school vouchers in Dayton, Ohio, New York City, and Washington, D.C.: Evidence from randomized field trials,” September 2000.
  7. Alan Krueger and Pei Zhu, “Another Look at the New York City Voucher Experiment,” Princeton University and the National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2003.
  8. Muraskin et al., “Barriers, Benefits, and Costs of Using Private Schools to Alleviate Overcrowding in Public Schools: Preliminary Report,” 1997.
  9. Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, 2005.
  10. Meg Bostrom, “Fulfilling the Promise of No Child Left Behind: A Meta Analysis of Attitudes Toward Public Education,” Public Knowledge LLC, April 2003.
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