Reason Foundation and EdChoice’s Fiscal Research and Education Center offer a calculator as a tool to assist state policymakers and choice advocates in providing more accurate estimates of the expenses of adopting publicly financed private-school choice (i.e., voucher) programs. While the calculator embeds a reasonable set of assumptions, it fails to solve the central problem state policymakers face: How are they to determine estimates of students who will enroll, and what percentage of them will be students leaving public versus private schools? Along with other shortcomings, the calculator and associated materials provide little guidance to help users devise those estimates, and there is little empirical research available on the topic. What is more reliably clear is that using the calculator can reveal to policymakers the high additional expenditures triggered when large numbers of students already enrolled in private schools accept proffered public subsidies through voucher, education savings account, or tuition tax credit programs.

Suggested Citation: Baker, B.D. (2024). NEPC review: K-12 school choice calculator. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/calculator

A report comparing the cost and academic performance of voucher recipients in Wisconsin to public school students concludes that the voucher programs are highly “productive,” achieving better academic outcomes at lower costs than public schools. But the report suffers from methodological shortcomings that undermine its conclusions. It ignores recent literature examining the effectiveness of voucher programs in other states, overlooks important considerations regarding true school funding costs, and fails to assess the voucher program against an appropriate comparison group of students. 

Suggested Citation: Kotok, S. (2023). NEPC review: The cost-effectiveness of Wisconsin’s private school choice programs. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/wisconsin-vouchers

An EdChoice report is billed as an overview of the varied and often contested research on outcomes in school choice programs, which it defines narrowly as vouchers plus voucher-style programs that provide public funding for private schools. The report examines research on student achievement, access, competitive effects, and other topics, purportedly to help policymakers and parents weigh the benefits and costs of these voucher programs. It claims to show that school choice “works,” based on finding more positive than negative studies, yet uses a simplistic, flawed approach that obscures important differences in studies and can create a misleading narrative about the research evidence.

Suggested Citation: Lubienski, C. (2023). NEPC review: The 123s of school choice: What the research says about private school choice programs, 2023 edition. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/school-choice

A report examines the monetary costs and benefits of Georgia’s Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit (QEEC), a type of voucher policy that provides a public subsidy for families to pay for private school tuition. Though the report argues the QEEC provides a net fiscal benefit for the state budget, several methodological challenges limit the report’s usefulness—most notably, a lack of data about how many students per year actually switch from public to private schools because of the vouchers. If most of the vouchers are provided to students already planning to attend a private school, then the policy only subsidizes private school students with funding that could otherwise be returned to taxpayers or invested in the state’s public education system, which is open to all students. Because the report relies on unrealistic assumptions, its suggestion that program benefits outweigh costs is tenuous and risks misleading state education leaders.

Suggested Citation: Knight, D.S. (2023). NEPC review: Qualified education expense tax credit: Economic analysis. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/tax-credit

A report considers the chief concerns associated with Ohio’s voucher program: the harm to public school student outcomes through competition, the affect on district financial resources, and increased racial segregation. Finding that Ohio vouchers have had few such harmful impacts, the report concludes that it has effectively dismissed the primary concerns of voucher critics. Yet, while the report is broadly methodologically sound for the narrow questions it poses, the questions it asks are out-of-date with respect to current issues raised by voucher critics, which focus on substantially decreased student achievement among students using vouchers. Thus, the report does little to assuage the primary concerns of those dedicated to serving children through community-based public education.

A Buckeye Institute report recommends sweeping policy reforms in response to COVID-19 academic disruptions and what the report asserts to be declining confidence in public schools. The report recommends the state rapidly expand three types of school choice or voucher-like policies—education savings accounts, public school choice, and tax credits for private school scholarship programs—combined with fiscal transparency. The report does not support its recommendations with evidence or consider potential unintended consequences, such as reduced student achievement, increased racial segregation, and reduced funding for public schools, instead relying on tenuous assumptions about predicted impacts of policy reforms.

Advocates for increased privatization of public schools have long contended that private schools could provide equal or better outcomes at lesser costs. To bolster that argument, this EdChoice report asserts that voucher and voucher-like (tax credit scholarship and education savings account) programs have saved state and local treasuries some $12.4 to $28.3 billion dollars as student “switchers” use those programs to leave public schools and enter private schools. However, the report’s findings do not provide a sound base for policy decisions. Included in this review are suggestions for more detailed accounting procedures and more nuanced methodologies for calculating reliable variable student costs.

A report released by the Manhattan Institute addresses the question of how private school voucher programs should be regulated. That is, if private schools are to receive public funds, what accountability mechanisms can fairly and reasonably safeguard taxpayer dollars? The report advocates for relaxing accountability mechanisms that presently constrain some voucher programs, asserting that “more and better” private schools will participate in response, benefitting students academically. Such claims, however, are supported by a selective reading and intentional misreading of educational research. Insofar as that is the case, the report merely repeats well-worn ideological positions and neither advances what we know about the challenge of regulating private schools nor offers useful information for policy decisions.

The Manhattan Institute’s report promotes Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) by demonstrating that taxpayer expense would fall if the program motivated families to move children from public schools funded by the state to private schools funded primarily by families. However, the report conveniently fails to note a large body of recent, rigorous research demonstrating that similar private school choice, or “voucher,” programs have had significant negative effects on student outcomes. In addition, the report overstates short-term reductions that local districts can achieve, and it sidesteps potential long-term harm to adequate funding for them. Thus, the report provides little or no useful guidance on the broader question of whether an ESA policy is desirable or would be good policy for New York State’s children or taxpayers. 

As an increasing number of states adopt or expand choice programs in the form of charter schools, vouchers, tuition tax-credit scholarships, and education savings accounts, questions grow about their efficacy. This review analyzes a recent report from Kentucky’s Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions claiming that NAEP score trends for Florida and Kentucky from the 1990s to 2019 exhibit sufficient evidence that choice programs catalyze significant educational improvement. This review rejects that determination for two reasons. First, the report overlooks the intensity of Florida’s focus on preparing students for annual state exams in reading and math since the implementation of its A+ Accountability Plan in 1999, which appears to have had a substantial impact on the state’s NAEP scores. Second, in focusing on Florida, the report fails to acknowledge that the majority of the top 10 states with choice programs (as measured by percentage of students enrolled in charter schools) fell short of Kentucky in posting gains on NAEP over this time period.

A School Choice Demonstration Project report ranks states based on their expansion of market-oriented school policies such as vouchers, charters, homeschooling, and inter-district choice. It then compares this “education freedom” ranking to National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores, finding a positive correlation between “freedom” and these scores, and hints at a causal relationship between “education freedom” and student learning. However, the report ignores relevant peer-reviewed research that has found negative consequences of school choice reforms, and significant methodological flaws cast doubt on its findings. These shortcomings and others undermine the report’s conclusions and render it useless for purposes of guiding policymaking.

The Manhattan Institute’s recent report concludes that the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue requires states to grant charters to religious organizations, including those that intend to deliver an explicitly religious curriculum that teaches religion as truth. While Espinoza involved a publicly financed private school tuition (voucher-like) program, the report reasons that its logic applies in full force to charter schools as well. Although this report does raise an important question and identifies the key issues for answering it, it excludes key federal and state case law necessary to fully and fairly analyze the issues. Similarly, it fails to acknowledge extensive key expert analysis on matters left unresolved by courts. The result is a one-sided analysis of the issue that is not a reliable basis for state action.

This review was originally published on Maureen Downey’s Get Schooled Blog in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on December 2, 2020, at: https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/opinion-study-on-savings-from-private-school-tax-credits-is-stab-in-the-dark/ZLO2D35EPNEKXGR5ASHA2SHT6I/.

Professor Welner wrote it in response to a guest column posted on the same blog on November 30, 2020, at: https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/opinion-private-school-scholarships-are-win-for-students-and-taxpayers/KQB4CIBHYVFFZCZN7PGDPSD6ZI/.

The primary goal of the report Unleashing Educational Opportunity: The Untapped Potential of Tax Credit Scholarships in Pennsylvania, is to argue that expanding vouchers or tuition tax credits for private schooling can lead to large economic gains for the state. Such gains would result from two purported benefits: increased lifetime earnings for those attending private schools on vouchers, and reduced social costs associated with crime. These assertions are based on the claim that a vast body of rigorous research shows higher academic achievement among voucher recipients and shows that these voucher recipients are more likely to attend and graduate college and less likely to commit felonies. The report fails to support its thesis and misapplies its findings, and thus is of no practical use to policymakers and others.

A report from EdChoice, working with Hanover Research, identifies and reviews studies that use Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) to determine student achievement or educational attainment outcomes of nine broad “education reform” areas. The report presents counts of studies with positive, negative, and neutral findings across these areas. RCTs are presented in the report as “gold standard” studies for determining effects of specific treatments on measured outcomes. The main concern with this report is that the casual reader will take the table presenting the tallies out of context and use it to argue that charter schools and vouchers for private schools have been studied most (because they are most important) and that most of these studies find positive effects. If, however, the report is not misused in such a way, it offers a limited contribution for readers wanting to get an initial feel for the RCT research in these areas.