School Choice or Best Systems_ What Improves Education_ - Margaret C. Wang [25]
West and Peterson23 came to similar conclusions and also showed that the worst grades under the A+ system had greater effects than the longer-term threat of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, even though more than 75 percent of all Florida elementary schools were in “need of improvement” in 2003, most often because one or more subgroups did not make adequate yearly progress toward academic proficiency.
A fourth study, by Figlio and Rouse,24 found public school achievement gains “consistent with the early results used by the state of Florida to claim large-scale improvements associated with the threat of voucher assignment,” but noted that “much of this estimated effect may be due to other factors. . . . [T]he gains in reading scores,” for example, were “explained largely by changing student characteristics.” Figlio and Rouse did find small relative improvement on the high-stakes tests administered by the state but much smaller relative improvement on a lower-stakes, nationally norm-referenced test. They contended that improvements by low-performing schools “were more due to the stigma of receiving the low grade rather than the threat of vouchers,” although the relative weighting seems difficult to estimate. Whatever the weighting of the psychological reasons, there is agreement about the program as a whole having a positive effect on public school performance.
Not all research has found a positive effect of vouchers on public schools. An evaluation of Washington, DC’s, public voucher program after one year showed no significant effect on public school achievement.25 The evaluators proposed several reasons: the program had no adverse effects on the traditional public school budgets, which may have reduced the incentive to respond to the competitive voucher threat; a year may have been too little time to reveal effects; and the small number of voucher students may have been insufficient to produce systemwide effects in a large city.
In conclusion, substantial evidence shows that public and private voucher programs, and the threat of publicly funded vouchers, have positive effects on public school achievement levels. Fear that vouchers would siphon away good students and needed funding is not confirmed by the limited experience to date. Competition and choice create benefits beyond those enjoyed by the students who participate directly in voucher programs.
Effects of Education Vouchers on Special Needs Students
Special needs students are categorized as having one or more physical and mental disabilities such as deafness, mental retardation, specific learning disabilities, or “behavioral disorders” (disruptive and uncontrollable behavior). In any given traditional public school, only one or a few students may be in a given category, so school staff may have difficulty providing the specialized equipment and services best for each category of students. For this reason, some states and districts have provided specialized schools for categories of students such as the blind and the partially sighted. School officials have allocated as much as four times the cost of educating a nondisabled student to special needs students’ education, and some students are transported out of state for special services.
On average, special education students perform relatively poorly in school but not necessarily as poorly in adult life. Specialized schools may devote themselves to a special need such as blindness, but some parents prefer that their children be “mainstreamed,” that is, placed in classes with nondisabled students—the situation they are likely to face as adults. Parents and experts differ in their views on both diagnosis and educational treatment, and the field is subject to much controversy and litigation.
Only one special needs voucher program has been evaluated, Florida’s McKay Scholarship Program. Fortunately, it is large in scale and available statewide, and evaluators have compared voucher parents’ opinions about their children’s experiences with those of parents whose children attend nonchosen