The test results show the percentage of students participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program who scored proficient or advanced was 34.4 percent for math and 55.2 percent for reading.
Among Milwaukee Public Schools students, it was 47.8 percent in math and 59 percent in reading. Among Milwaukee Public Schools students coming from families making 185 percent of the federal poverty level — a slightly better comparison because voucher students come from families making no more than 175 percent — it was 43.9 percent in math and 55.3 percent in reading.
That is a gap of 9.5 percent in the math proficiency between the MPS students and voucher school students. At the very least the state should stop to look at the Milwaukee voucher program and seriously consider if and under what conditions it should continue- because what is happening now is not working.
11 comments:
Wow. And Walker's budget calls for less accountability, not more, for "choice" schools. Brilliant.
I think a social statistician would dig much deeper than that. There may very well be underlying causes and effects not revealed by these stats. And, of course, nowadays you have to thoroughly examine the source of these 'studies', whom often have 'nice names' but are really covers for politically biased organizations.
Case in point (anecdotally) - you might say public schools have a higher incidence of troubled kids or kids with special ed needs. An idiot might see that and say:
"At the very least the state should stop to look at the public school system and seriously consider if and under what conditions it should continue- because what is happening now is not working."
Of course, that would be wrong because there is some self-selection that private schools are allowed. Troublemakers and costly special ed kids can be turned down or asked to leave a private school. The public school can too, but they are somewhat limited in that regard.
Dig deeper Peter. There must be a real cause and effect here. Correlate, stratify, cross-tab, etc... Now get going.
More from the article. It's best to read the whole thing.
John Witte, a UW-Madison political science professor working with the University of Arkansas on a five-year study of the Milwaukee voucher program, cautioned that one year of state test results "isn't going to be the death knell of vouchers."
"In order to study achievement growth and gain, you have to study individual students over time," Witte said.
The University of Arkansas study, which tracks about 2,700 comparable students over time, has shown no statistically significant difference between the test scores of voucher students and Milwaukee Public Schools students, Arkansas professor Patrick Wolf said. It has also shown positive results such as improved performance of Milwaukee's public schools through competition and savings to the state of $50 million per year, Wolf said.
I'm familiar with the Wolf study - you can find it here: http://www.uaedreform.org/SCDP/Milwaukee_Eval/Report_10.pdf
The authors don't find statistically significant differences between the voucher schools and MPS, except: Estimates of one model, which accounted for differential program effects associated with
student gender, found statistically significant and negative effects for MPCP girls in reading, and positive
effects for MPCP boys also in reading,
The report also doesn't appear to support the contention that their has been an improvement in MPS schools due to competition- that appears to be opinion, although I am sympathetic to that view.
The voucher program was justified because it would provide a better education for kids, its now clear that it is not - even from the most favorable study. It is also true that spending public money in parochial schools is constitutionally troubling and so at least there needs to be a compelling public interest here.
Given the data its time to seriously re-evaluate.
If the educational benefits are comparable and the cost is much less than we are currently paying, then shouldn't we be looking at this?
If public school costs are out of line with the 'private sector' of education, and the performance and benefits are roughly equivalent, then shouldn't we be looking at reducing public school costs?
We were sold the "voucher" bill of goods on the grounds that it would improve learning. Now that rug has been pulled out the voucher proponents have switched their arguments to "but its cheaper"!
Well its probably not: voucher school don't have to take expensive special ed or ESL students, and there has not been one study examining the cost issue!
2.13 PM Poster........
the answer is YES!!!!!!!!!!!
The goal of the voucher program was to improve performance, not save money- and it was justified on that basis. Beware of bait-and-switch justification, its a fast way to get to bad public policy.
The pressing need in Milwaukee is to get to better performance, saving money to get comparable performance is not acceptable in my mind.
Sure we should investigate if the voucher program saves money, but when examined these are some of the things that will probably be found:
Not being required to serve special needs students saves money. Having the flexibility to accept only those students that maximize your efficiency saves money (the differential cost of adding 5 voucher students to an existing class of 15 is almost zero). And providing lesser services (if the recent test scores results bear out) saves money.
Study: Voucher students more likely to attend college
Milwaukee voucher students are more likely to graduate and enroll in college than their public school counterparts, according to a new study from researchers the state asked to evaluate the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.
If you have a child with special needs, even mild, good luck to you trying to find a private school to take you. Therefore they are stuck in public school. The disinterested parents also will keep their kids in public school because they don't give enough to research what private school they could get their child into. So, what you have left in public school are the special needs and children of the disinterested. So, if you look at what will happen under a voucher for everyone system, that is it. Not what public schools should be. It is what the republicans want, though. As they have often shown, who gives a hoot about the poor, special needs, and needy of our society?? Not them. Instead of improving education (HINT: testing the snot out of kids and cutting out reading specialists is not how to do it ) they would prefer to destroy it.
I remember reading the book "Freakonomics," which found that students who applied for school vouchers tended to do better then average students, even if they were not accepted to the new school.
The thought was that these students tended to have parents that wanted the best for their children and would make extra efforts to do so (why they applied for the voucher). These efforts tended to encourage the students to do their best at any school. I suspect this could explain the results of the study.
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