Another Study Showing Vouchers Success

As noted in the Heritage Foundation Policy Weblog:

Researchers have completed a study of Colombia’s secondary-school voucher program, PACES, which “awarded nearly 125,000 vouchers to low-income high school students…between 1991 and 1997.” The vouchers covered approximately half of the average private-school tuition for selected students, provided they continued to make “adequate academic progress.”

Produced by the National Bureau of Economic Report, this report is one of the first to measure the long-term impact of vouchers. By comparing winners and losers of Colombia’s voucher lottery (a perfect control experiment), the study finds


  • A 15-20 percent increase in secondary school graduation rates for voucher recipients;


  • A .2 standard deviation bump in standardized test scores for voucher recipients;


  • A closing of the performance gap between boys and girls among voucher recipients; and


  • The greatest improvement for voucher recipients among the lowest-performing students.



So there you have it: vouchers led to higher graduation rates and test scores. Moreover, these benefits were greatest for students struggling the most, suggesting that support for school choice is hardly the “elitist strategy” some voucher opponents, such as the NEA, make it out to be.

We wrote earlier on New Zealand’s voucher experience, which lifted up the country’s public schools. (Perhaps this is what so worries the NEA?)

And look here for the latest news on school choice around the United States.

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