Effects of differentiated school vouchers: Evidence from a policy change and date of birth cutoffs

This paper studies the effects of an increase in school choice by examining a 2008 reform that made the value of Chile’s (previously flat, universal) school voucher a step function of student income. This policy increased the number of private schools that low income children could access free of charge. I identify the impact of the policy by combining its introduction with variation from a date of birth enrollment cutoff. I show that the differentiated voucher lowered, but only slightly, the probability that students used public schools. Students more likely to move to private schools experienced better school characteristics but no increase in test scores. Further analysis suggests a rise in test scores for students most likely to stay in public schools. These results suggest that the effects of the policy on test scores were caused by responses from public schools, instead of by the re-sorting of students into private schools.     

Public subsidies to private schools do make a difference for achievement in mathematics: Longitudinal evidence from Canada

Selection into private schools is the principal cause of bias when estimating the effect of private schooling on academic achievement. By exploiting the generous public subsidizing of private high schools in the province of Québec, the second most populous province in Canada, we identify the causal impact of attendance in a private high school on achievement in mathematics. Because the supply of highly subsidized spaces is much higher at the high school level than at the grade school level, 94% of transitions from the public to the private sector occur at the end of primary school, we assume that these transitions are exogenous with respect to changes in transitory unobserved variables affecting math scores conditional on variables such as changes in income and child fixed effects. Using 7 cycles of data from Statistics Canada's National Longitudinal Survey on Children and Youth (NLSCY), we estimate the effect of attending a private high school on the percentile rank and a standardized math test score with different models (child fixed effects, random effects and a pooled OLS) and restricted samples to control for the degree of selection. The results, interpreted as a treatment on the treated effect show that the effect of changing schools, from a public grade school to a private high school, increases the percentile rank of the math score between 4 and 10 points and by between 0.12 and 0.36 of a standard deviation depending on the specification and samples.     

Educating the urban poor

The historical evidence is examined to see how low-income students have fared in the urban public schools. Research shows that some schools have been able to raise low-income student achievement. In Rutter's 7-year study, leadership of the principal, high teacher expectations, and rigorous academic programs helped raise achievement. While some results have shown that a majority of low-income students have failed, some immigrant groups, such as Jews, seem to adapt more readily and perform better. The implication is that there may be hope for a substantial improvement in the urban public schools.     

A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

Private School Diversity in Denmark's National Voucher System

The voucher system in Denmark combines unrestricted generous subsidies with substantial autonomy of private schools as to schedule and teaching methods. This has produced a private school sector with a wide variety of school types. This paper uses data on eight cohorts of students (over 510,000 individuals) to compare educational attainment in public and private voucher schools, including religious schools (Catholic and Protestant) and various types of non‐religious schools. The findings suggest that, after controlling for individual and peer characteristics, the average public student would attain moderately higher levels of education if he/she attended grammar or Catholic school, relative to the public alternative. Attainment of students at Protestant, international and German minority schools is not different from public schools. However, attending free, boarding and, particularly, little and Waldorf schools is associated with substantially lower completion rates at the upper secondary level, which is probably at least partly due to the clustering of special education students in these school types, which cannot be controlled for. At the tertiary level, differences between private and public schools generally vanish.     

The impact of school choice and public policy on segregation: Evidence from Chile

Advocates argue that vouchers can make improved educational opportunity available to disadvantaged students. Critics contend that vouchers increase the risk of stratification. Researchers have found that Chile's voucher program has lead to increased socioeconomic school segregation. What has been overlooked, however, is segregation between schools within a sector and variation within private for-profit and non-profit school sectors. I find that public schools are more likely to serve disadvantaged students than private voucher schools. I also find that disadvantaged students are more segregated among private voucher schools than among public schools. While between and within sector segregation levels vary across private voucher school types, the differences are not always consistent with theory. The data also suggest that policies can either mitigate or exacerbate the stratifying effects of educational vouchers.     

“Screening” or “Meritocracy”: Does the Choice of a Private School Help Students Achieve Higher Academic Performance? —Based on the PISA 2018 Analysis of Four Provinces and Municipalities in China

The introduced policy of “synchronized enrollment of public and private schools” has once again triggered the debate on the effectiveness of public and private schools. Based on the data of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 from four Chinese provinces and municipalities, this paper explores whether private schools gain a relative advantage in student academic performance through student “screening” or academic “meritocracy,” through a hierarchical linear model (HLM) and an empirical test of the propensity score matching (PSM). It has been found that the academic performance of students in private schools is significantly better than that in public schools. But with background, metacognitive ability, and learning hours of students in private schools controlled for, such academic performance is not significantly superior, suggesting that private schools rely heavily on student “screening” to achieve a relative advantage in student academic performance. This finding has also verified the scientific nature of the above policy.     

An analysis of factors that affect public and private school science achievement

Data on 30,030 sophomores in the “High School and Beyond” project were analyzed to test the private school superiority hypothesis for science achievement. The supposition that private schools are superior to public schools in producing science achievement is rejected on the basis of the present analysis. Major differences in science achievement between public and private schools appear attributable to relatively fixed characteristics of students and to their experiences beyond the school environment, rather than to factors easily alterable by educators. The authors point out and discuss the value of homework, the problem of excessive television viewing, the influence of parental involvement in education, and the effect of the amount of academic classes taken.     

The public–private test score gap in Brazil

This paper presents a counterfactual decomposition of the public–private gap on test scores obtained by 8th graders in Brazil. Quantile regression methods are used to obtain a characterization of the conditional distribution of scores, which is then used to build counterfactuals. The results obtained suggest that low performance students attending public schools would perform even worse with the returns to characteristics from private schools’ students. Further analysis brings the importance of the family background to children's scholar achievement.     

The effects of quarter of birth on academic outcomes at the elementary school level

This paper uses public schools data to examine the effects of age on student academic achievement in light of recent trends to delay children's entry into kindergarten. To avoid problems of endogeneity, students’ quarters of birth is employed as an instrument for age at entry. In particular, the effects of students’ quarters of birth on math and reading standardized test scores and grade retention at the elementary school level are estimated. Evidence of benefits to being among the oldest in one's age-grade cohort is found. Interestingly, over time, the youngest students begin to perform approximately on par with the oldest students, creating a u-shaped pattern to the data.     

Early to rise? The effect of daily start times on academic performance

Local school districts often stagger daily start times for their schools in order to reduce busing costs. This paper uses data on all middle school students in Wake County, NC from 1999 to 2006 to identify the causal effect of daily start times on academic performance. Using variation in start times within schools over time, the effect is a two percentile point gain in math test scores – roughly fourteen percent of the black–white test score gap. I find similar results for reading scores and using variation in start times across schools. The effect is stronger for students in the lower end of the distribution of test scores. I find evidence supporting increased sleep as a mechanism through which start times affect test scores. Later start times compare favorably on cost grounds to other education interventions which result in similar test score gains.     

Bringing the schools back in: the stratification of educational achievement in the Chilean voucher system

This paper analyzes the socioeconomic stratification of achievement in the Chilean voucher system using a census of 4th and 8th graders, a multilevel methodology, and accounting for unobserved selectivity into school sector. Findings indicate that the association between the school's aggregate family socioeconomic status (SES) and test scores is much greater in the private-voucher sector than in the public one, resulting in marked socioeconomic stratification of test scores in the Chilean voucher system. We also find that the amount of tuition fees paid by parents in private-voucher schools has no bearing on test scores, after controlling for the socioeconomic makeup of the school. Implications of these findings for educational inequality in the context of a universal voucher system are discussed.     

The relative quality and cost-effectiveness of private and public schools for low-income families: a case study in a developing country

The “mushrooming” of private schools for low-income families has been widely noted in the literature; however, very little is known about the quality of these schools. This research explored the relative quality of private unaided (recognised and unrecognised) and government schools in low-income areas of Hyderabad, India. A preliminary census to locate unrecognised private schools – not on official lists – was conducted. Data were collected on achievement and background variables for 3,910 pupils from a stratified random sample of schools. Using multilevel modelling shows that pupils in private unrecognised and recognised schools, when controlled for age, pupil's IQ, and class average IQ, achieve higher scores in mathematics and English than equivalent pupils in government schools. There is no significant difference between private and government schools in pupil achievement in Urdu. The achievement advantage for private schools did not arise because of greater resources available, at least in terms of per pupil teacher salaries.     

The adverse effects of parents’ school selection errors on academic achievement: Evidence from the Beijing open enrollment program

One major concern with public school open enrollment programs is the potential for parents’ school selection errors to adversely affect their children's academic achievement. In this study of the Beijing middle school open enrollment program, we estimate the degree to which children's school outcomes were negatively affected by the poor choices their parents made during the school selection process. We do this by examining parents’ responses to a survey on school choices combined with actual school applications, school admission records, and High School Entrance Examination test scores for 4717 students entering middle schools in Beijing via randomized lotteries. We find that the children of parents who made judgment errors in school selection were admitted to lower quality schools and achieved lower test scores on the High School Entrance Examination. Parents who had less education, whose children performed at lower levels in primary school, and who were less attentive to teachers’ opinions about schools were more prone to make these errors. Providing assistance to parents, especially those less prepared to make informed choices about school selection, is consequently important for supporting more efficient and equitable open enrollment programs.     

Supplying Choice: An Analysis of School Participation Decisions in Voucher Programs in Washington,DC, Indiana,and Louisiana

Since school voucher funds are public, policymakers fiercely debate how those funds should be spent. A goal of many decision-makers is to ensure that every private school option is “high-quality” through program accountability regulations. Private schools, however, decide whether to participate in a private school choice program and likely factor the amount of state regulations into that decision. This paper estimates the program participation decisions of the private schools in D.C., Indiana, and Louisiana. We specifically examine the impacts of voucher regulations on the supply-side of voucher programs. We employ a linear probability model to examine how school quality, as measured by revenue, tuition, enrollment, and Great School Review scores, is associated with program participation for schools. Results indicate that higher tuition-levels and larger cohort enrollments, conditions normally associated with high quality schools, identify schools that are less likely to participate in voucher programs. We also find a consistent negative relationship between Great Schools Review score and the school participation decision in all three locations; however, these coefficients are not statistically significant. State fixed effects reveal that private schools in D.C. and Louisiana, the two states that have higher regulatory burdens, are less likely to participate in voucher programs.     

The impact of after-school programs on educational equality and private tutoring expenses

The purpose of this study was to examine how the implementation of after-school programs in Korea’s public schools is related to educational equality and private tutoring expenses. The analyzed data was from the Survey on the Status of Private Tutoring and the Study of the Policy Measures to Reduce Private Tutoring Expenses conducted by KEDI (Korea Education Development Institute) in (International conference for exploring the ways to activate the after-school program, KEDI, Seoul, 2007). The Chi-square test was employed to investigate (a) the relationship between after-school participation and family income and residential location of students (b) the association between after-school engagement and the reduction in private tutoring expenses. The study found that: (a) in general, low-income and rural students participated more than higher income and urban peers in after-school programs and (b) after-school participation was generally negatively associated with private tutoring engagement and the impact of after-school participation on the reduction in private tutoring expenses was stronger for low-income students in elementary and high schools and rural students in high schools. The overall findings provide further research issue regarding whether after-school programs can help foster educational equality by offering more opportunities for learning and achievement improvement for disadvantaged students. The results also imply the potential of after-school programs in reducing private tutoring expenses, particularly for low-income families.     

Measuring the effect of charter schools on public school student achievement in an urban environment: Evidence from New York City

This paper uses student level data from New York City to study the relationship between a public school losing enrollment to charter school competitors and the academic achievement of students who remain enrolled in it. Geographic measures most often used to study the effect of school choice policies on public school student achievement are not well suited for densely populated urban environments. I adopt a direct approach and measure charter school exposure as the percentage of a public school's students who exited for a charter school at the end of the previous year. Depending on model specification, I find evidence that students in schools losing more students to charter schools either are unaffected by the competitive pressures of the choice option or benefit mildly in both math and English.     

The Potential Impact of Vouchers

This article provides an updated review of recent empirical research on the potential impact of private school vouchers. It addresses 3 questions: (a) do students that use vouchers to attend a private school obtain better outcomes than would be obtained in a public school? (b) Do vouchers encourage student sorting and how does sorting affect student outcomes? (c) Does the offer of vouchers promote competition, improving outcomes of students who remain in public schools? Conclusions are that African American students who are offered vouchers experience small achievement gains. The results are highly sensitive to analytical assumptions and are not evident for other racial or ethnic groups. The evidence further indicates that large-scale voucher plans encourage sorting that could lower the achievement of public school students. There is no compelling evidence that such losses are outweighed by competitive gains in public schools. The conclusions on sorting and competition are most applicable to unrestricted choice plans in which flat-rate vouchers are offered to a large number of students with few eligibility restrictions. Some emerging evidence indicates that alternate approaches to policy design could yield more promising results.     

Public versus private schools in developing countries: Evidence from Colombia and Tanzania

The paper presents evidence on differences between public and private schools in Colombia and Tanzania on a number of indicators like cognitive achievement, unit cost and labor market outcomes. The findings are mixed, in the sense that in both countries, statistically controlling for student ability and socioeconomic background, private school students outperform their public school counterparts on academic achievement, whereas the reverse is true regarding achievement on specialized subject-matter. One possible explanation of this finding is that parental pressure (social demand) on private schools makes them tacitly emphasize academic subjects which are viewed by their customers as leading to a higher level of opportunities after graduation.     

智利教育券政策述评

1980年,智利开始实施由公共经费资助的政府教育券政策.该政策以弗里德曼的自由市场教育券模式为理论基础,覆盖全国所有的公立和部分私立中小学.教育券政策的实施尽管扩大了学生及其家长选择学校的机会,但研究表明社会经济背景较好的学生才是该政策的更大受益者.此外,在改进学校效益、提高教育质量、促进教育公平等方面,智利的教育券政策也并没有取得预期的效应.因此,有必要重新认识教育券政策的目的与功能,以寻求新的突破.