Last year, my colleague Rob wrote a piece for the Ohio Capital Journal about Ohio’s private school voucher program. This is the system by which families can get public money to help pay for private school. Essentially it allows qualifying families to choose a private school over whatever their local public school would be.
Proponents of school vouchers argue that this allows families to choose whatever education works best for their children. Opponents argue that these vouchers shift public funds from public schools to private schools, worsening conditions for those who remain in public schools.
One question that largely goes unanswered in any debates on this topic is what private school vouchers actually do for students.
It’s not enough to just compare private school outcomes to public school outcomes, that ignores the self-selecting nature of private schools. We also should be interested in how outcomes change for people who don’t receive these vouchers, since their education situation is changing as well.
Thanks to a new paper from researchers at the Urban Institute, we can now answer these questions.
One important caveat to note is that this research focuses on Ohio’s school voucher program when eligibility was restricted to low income students. It has since seen a significant expansion, with nearly all Ohio families now qualifying for at least some benefit.
This research found that students who enrolled in the school voucher program attended and graduated from college at higher rates than their peers in public schools. These impacts were felt most strongly by black students and students from the lowest income families.
Perhaps an even more encouraging finding was that students who were eligible for school vouchers but chose instead to remain in public school also saw modest increases in their rates of college enrollment and graduation. It appears that by allowing these families to make a more flexible decision about their education creates positive externalities for other students too.
I will admit, I was pretty skeptical about school vouchers before reading this paper. I was particularly hesitant about what this program might mean for people who don’t participate in it, but the evidence speaks for itself.
However, I don’t think this paper means that school vouchers are always good no matter what. I’ve written in the past about some of the challenges that arise when policymakers try to scale up pilot programs. Just because this program is effective for one group does not mean it will be effective for everyone.
I’m curious to see how many students change schools as a result of this expansion. My prior assumption is that families with higher incomes who are now exposed to this subsidy might already have the requisite income to choose private school if they desire. If that is true, then this subsidy won’t change people’s education behaviors, but instead will just free up income for other types of consumption. However, if the expansion does manage to change people’s education choices, I now suspect that it will create positive outcomes for students.