Sourav Mandal ([info]smandal) wrote,
@ 2008-03-15 03:20:00
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Entry tags:politics

School vouchers and data
I support school choice in the form of vouchers for two reasons:

* Spending per pupil is poorly correlated with school performance

* Competition improves school performance

Does anyone have any hard data contradicting these claims?

The voucher program in Sweden seems to have been both popular (even with the union!) and successful in increasing education quality. However, it comes with a few caveats: for schools to be able to cash vouchers, they must not charge any tuition above the voucher amount. Moreover, they must accept students on a first-come/first-serve basis -- no selection process.

This reminds me quite a bit of Swiss healthcare: affording consumer choice of provider, while ensuring equal access to a minimum standard.


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[info]herbie
2008-03-15 01:30 am UTC (link)
The Swiss don't have a large number of competing ethnic communities that they would like to integrate which would likely stratify in a voucher system.

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[info]smandal
2008-03-15 04:52 am UTC (link)
But the Swedes do, because of their liberal refugee policy.

As I noted, no Swedish independent school that wishes to participate in the voucher program is allowed to "skim" (admit by ability, race or gender) or charge more than the voucher amount (which would create a middle-class "windfall" effect).

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[info]herbie
2008-03-15 10:09 am UTC (link)
Swiss, Swedes, Swazilanders, who's really counting?

And it's not an issue necessarily of systemic segregation, but rather self-stratification.

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[info]smandal
2008-03-15 04:08 pm UTC (link)
If the schools can't charge more than the voucher amount, and there is no admissions process (i.e., they have to take kids first-come/first-serve), how would this occur?

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[info]herbie
2008-03-15 10:18 am UTC (link)
Out of curiosity, do you have hard data supporting those claims? Actually, I can see competition draining valuable teachers from one school to the better one, particularly with grade school teacher salaries in the same ballpark as they are now.

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[info]smandal
2008-03-15 04:14 pm UTC (link)
The Swedish experiment is the first one that has been on a massive scale, operating long enough for the market to respond. This paper do a multiple regression analysis to show that competition is what induces public schools to improve; follow-up papers support the claim.

The Milwaukee voucher experiment is the longest running big program in the US, and the right points to it as a roaring success, and the left pounces on small analytic flaws in the studies. Utah has started a very big voucher program, and we'll see how that does.

As for spending per pupil and school performance, there are places to download the data set. Here's a Reuter's story giving a summary.

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[info]smandal
2008-03-15 04:15 pm UTC (link)
If schools stink due to mismanagement, then they *should* lose teachers, and the voucher programs also allows them to lose students -- these students can go some place better, and these poorly managed schools shut down.

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