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A rising tide that lifts all boats

(from The Bluegrass Institute)

Fears that school choice negatively affect public schools “ … aren’t merely overblown,” says Harvard economics professor Caroline Hoxby. “They’re simply wrong.”

A favorite mantra of those opposed to educational liberty has become that school choice “skims” badly needed funds and the best students and thus reduces the chance for public schools to succeed. Not true. In fact, the research says it’s just the opposite.

In Florida, students in schools with two failing grades in a four-year period become eligible for vouchers for use at a private school or a different public school.

The results show that failing schools improve when facing competition. Schools with students eligible for vouchers made 5.9 percentile points larger year-to-year-gains on the Stanford-9 math test than Florida public schools that did not face voucher competition.

Charter schools also provide beneficial competition. Manhattan Institute researchers Jay Greene and Greg Forster discovered that Milwaukee high schools located closest to charter schools also boasted larger improvements in test scores.

If a new charter school opened one kilometer from a regular public high school, students’ test scores will likely improve by 9 percentile points during a four-year period. With a charter schools at least five kilometers away, the expected gain is 3.5 percentile points.

Choice reveals similar results in Arizona, Michigan, Maine and Vermont and would also have a profound effect on Kentucky’s public-education system.

Hoxby concludes that: “If every school in the nation were to face a high level of competition from both other districts and from private schools, the productivity of America’s schools, in terms of students’ level of learning at a given level of spending, would be 28 percent higher than it is now.”

Critics say school choice hurts kids and their schools. The evidence says otherwise.

Sources:

“Education Myths” by Jay P. Greene, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005

“Rising Tide” by Caroline Minter Hoxby, Hoover Institution

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