NEPC Resources on Privatization
NEPC Review: Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit: Economic Analysis (Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, June 2023)
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
NEPC Review: The Ohio EdChoice Program’s Impact on School District Enrollments, Finances, and Academics (Thomas B. Fordham Institute, December 2022)
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 Yet, while the report is broadly methodologically sound for the narrow questions it poses, the questions it asks are out-of-date with respect to current issues raised by voucher critics, which focus on substantially decreased student achievement among students using vouchers.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.
NEPC Review: For-Profit Charter Schools: An Evaluation of Their Spending and Outcomes (Thomas B. Fordham Institute, September 2022)
A Thomas B. Fordham Institute report examines academic outcomes in Ohio’s nonprofit and for-profit charter schools; in addition, it explores whether differences in contracted services in for-profits appear to correlate with differences in their outcomes. Despite the report's claims, it offers little evidence to remove skepticism from the debate over for-profit status. In addition, the report is limited in its focus on only Ohio, which has substantially more transparency than many states require for school choice options. As a result, the report offers little to inform policy and practice in dissimilar or nationwide contexts.
NEPC Review: Fiscal Effects of School Choice: Analyzing the Costs and Savings of Private School Choice Programs in America (EdChoice, November 2021)
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.
New Concerns Raised About a Well-Known Digital Learning Platform
NEPC Review: Ripple Effect: How Expanding School Choice Programs Can Lead to More College Graduates and a Stronger Economy (Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, January 2020)
A report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty claims a chain of benefits will purportedly follow if the current cap on voucher enrollment for the state of Wisconsin is increased from four percent to 20%. The resulting improvement in graduation rates will, the report asserts, result in the employment of more people at higher wages, leading to increased personal wealth and government income of $3.2 billion over 20 years.The obvious failing of this logic is how this projected “ripple effect” will occur. Causal links are weakly explained and lack support. The claims cannot be verified because the methods are not described and, in key areas, the numbers literally do not add up. Other prominent unaddressed issues include social stratification, inequitable selection effects, the cost of running two school systems, and the effects on learning. With a large number of relevant variables at play and the study’s apparent reliance on descriptive methods, interpretations of the data are subjective and untrustworthy, and ultimately, the report offers no assistance to policymakers or others.
NEPC Review: Beyond the Mirage: How Pragmatic Stewardship Could Transform Learning Outcomes in International Education Systems (June 2019)
A report, Beyond the Mirage: How Pragmatic Stewardship Could Transform Learning Outcomes in International Education Systems, prescribes a shift in the leadership role of education ministers – from providers and guarantors of education to pragmatic stewards of education systems. Focusing on the organization of education sectors in the Global South, the report contends that this shift will address the need for higher quality education, rather than simply providing access to education. The “pragmatic stewardship” advocated in the report involves strategies that increasingly incorporate private actors. Accordingly, the report draws on four case studies of different types of private-sector involvement in education as examples of a broader shift by education ministers. However, each case contains limitations – some discussed, others not – that undermine their suitability as successful examples of divesting public education systems of their primary role as guarantors and providers of education. While the report claims to be “non-ideological” and “beyond the mirage” of the education privatization debate, the funders of the report (no publisher is listed) have a material stake in a main program cited as evidence, raising concerns about conflicts of interest. The use of questionable evidence and the conflicts of interest combine to render the report’s recommendations unsubstantiated.
NEPC Review: Is Public Schooling a Public Good? An Analysis of Schooling Externalities (Cato Institute, May 2018)
A report from the Cato Institute opens with Horace Mann’s well-known conviction that public schools are the bedrock of a democratic society – a public good that should be made available to all. Yet the report, Is Public Schooling a Public Good? An Analysis of Schooling Externalities, improperly conflates the civic and economic definitions of a public good. Although the report begins with Mann’s vision of the role of public schools as building a better society, it then misleadingly shifts the analysis to the economic value of public schools as a market-based “good” like steel or corn. The report relies on a false equivalence of the civic and economic definitions of a public good to advance a proposal for de-funding public schools and introducing a nationwide education savings account (voucher) program. While there is extensive research on the educational purposes of schooling, the Cato report’s limited review of this literature consistently misrepresents the meaning, scope and implications of this literature. The result is a portrayal of public schools as “agents of harm” for what appears to be an ideologically driven thought experiment. Even for those who might be in favor of vouchers, the report’s imbalance, flawed logic and limited research base render the report of no use to policymakers.
NEPC Review: New York Charter Schools Outperform Traditional Selective Public Schools: More Evidence that Cream-Skimming is Not Driving Charters' Success (Manhattan Institute , March 2017)
A common argument leveled against charter schools is that they attract the most motivated and intelligent students from already struggling public schools. Marcus Winters seeks to examine this claim, known as “cream-skimming,” by comparing the performance of New York City’s (NYC) charter middle schools with a set of traditional selective public middle schools, which admit students on the basis of prior performance. Findings indicate that, controlling for student characteristics, charter schools perform no differently in English Language Arts (ELA) and significantly better in math than selective schools. Based on this, the report concludes that the success of NYC charter schools cannot be explained by cream-skimming. While on its face this conclusion may seem logical, the report suffers from two primary flaws. First, it assumes that selective school applicants are higher performing and more motivated than charter school applicants. This is unlikely to be the case because all students are required to apply to traditional middle schools in NYC, while applying to a charter school requires navigating an additional application process. Second, the report relies on a single year of data to make comparisons of ill-defined and inappropriate outcomes—an approach that does not address either the question of cream-skimming or charter school success. As an evaluation of cream-skimming in charter schools, this report misses the mark.
NEPC Review: Apples to Apples: The Definitive Look at School Test Scores in Milwaukee and Wisconsin (Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, March 2017)
The report reviewed here compares Wisconsin student test score performance for the 2015-16 school year across public schools, charter schools and private schools participating in one of the state’s voucher programs. Comparing a single year’s test scores across school sectors that serve different student populations is inherently problematic. The report uses linear regression models to attempt to adjust for these differences and make what the authors claim are “apples to apples” comparisons. Based on these comparisons, the report concludes that charter schools and private schools participating in the voucher programs are more effective than traditional public schools. Unfortunately, the limited nature of available data undermines any such causal conclusions. The inadequate and small number of school-level variables included in the regression models are not able to control for important confounding variables, most notably prior student achievement. Further, the use of aggregate percent proficient metrics masks variation in performance across grade levels and makes the results sensitive to the (arbitrary) location of the proficiency cut scores. The report’s description of methods and results also includes some troubling inconsistencies. Thus, while the report does present important descriptive statistics about test score performance in Wisconsin, it cannot provide answers for those interested in determining which schools or school choice policies in Wisconsin are most effective.
Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2017
Dismantling Public Education: Turning Ideology into Gold
Review of The State Education Agency: At the Helm, Not the Oar
This sincere and well-written but methodologically and politically unsophisticated report argues states should step aside from any direct involvement in the reform business and hand it over to an “ecosystem of nonprofit organizations.” The report makes five assertions about State Education Agencies (SEAs): they suffer from a lack of human resources; their procurement practices are cumbersome and time-consuming; they suffer from antiquated rulemaking; they are undermined by statewide politics; and they suffer from “institutional sclerosis.” These claims set the stage for the report’s basic recommendation: “The SEA should not attempt to implement the nuts and bolts of school improvement, but instead create an environment in which a variety of other organizations can fill the void.” In place of expanding the authority of the SEAs, the report suggests a“4Cs” model of operation: control, contract, cleave and create. Drawing on secondary materials, the report’s claims about the failures of the SEAs are strong but unsubstantiated by data independent from advocacy. Privatizing educational reform is an idea whose time has not come, and most likely never will, because it’s an abstraction based on a model of American education disconnected from the democratic ethos that animates public education. Public education is a public good; it is the loom by which citizens together weave the social contract.