
Education Gap
Vouchers and Urban Schools
Brookings Institution (Publisher)
Published on 18. April 2002
Book
Hardback
275 pages
978-0-8157-0214-6 (ISBN)
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Description
While the merits of vouchers have been the subject of intense public debate in recent years, there has been very little available evidence upon which to gauge their efficacy. The first publicly funded voucher plan involving private schools wasn't established until 1990 in Milwaukee; before then, the only data on school choice came from a small, poorly designed program in California. Voucher programs grew dramatically in the latter half of the 1990s. In 2000, about 60,000 students participated in seventy-one programs, most privately funded. This growth is now providing researchers with the ability to measure the impact of vouchers for the first time in multiple cities. The Education Gap is the first book to gather a significant body of data on vouchers in multiple locations, and it reveals startling new evidence that voucher programs benefit African-American students more than participants from other ethnic groups. To explain this phenomenon, the authors point out that residential selection is the most common form of school choice available in American public education today. Since this process is likely to leave African Americans in the worst public schools, new forms of choice directed toward low-income families are most likely to benefit black students. The authors examine the effects of school vouchers on test scores, parental satisfaction, parent-school communications, and political tolerance among students and parents participating in four pilot programs in New York City; Dayton, Ohio; Washington, D.C.; the Edgewood school district in San Antonio; and a program that offered vouchers to 40,000 low-income families nationwide. Though the programs operated in a wide variety of settings, the findings were surprisingly consistent. After two years, African-American students who used vouchers to switch from public to private schools scored substantially better on math and reading tests. By contrast, no significant positive effects on the test scores of other ethnic groups were detected. While parents in all ethnic groups were generally more supportive of private education, African-American parents expressed particularly high enthusiasm for the private schools their children attended. The authors also report information on the kinds of students and families who take advantage of a voucher opportunity, allowing them to seewhether only the ! degreesbest and brightest!+/- public school students were able to take advantage of school voucher programs. The results documented in The Education Gap shed new light on the effects of school vouchers on students in poor, urban environments. This information will be important to policymakers, scholars, and citizens are they continue to search for ways to improve education in urban areas.
Reviews / Votes
"The authors' RFT design sets this study apart from most of the earlier school choice studies...the authors' sophisticated and skillfully presented research elevates a debate that has been largely limited to the realm of politics and public opinion...This impressive volume should be required reading for anyone nvolved in K-12 research or policymaking." --Michael F. Addonizio, Wayne State University, Book Review "This is the most important book ever written on the subject of vouchers." --John E. Brandl, University of Minnesota, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs "Love them or hate them, vouchers are on the agenda. Because of the strength of its research design and the daunting financial and administrative hurdles facing anyone who tries to launch another randomized evaluation of vouchers, The Education Gap will provide an important intellectual battleground for the debate over vouchers for years to come." --Alan B. Krueger, Princeton University "provide[s] convincing evidence that someone should fund a large, multi-year program that pays all the tuition for any low-income parent who wants to send a child to a private school." --Martin Morse Wooster, The Washington Times, 9/22/2002 "A well-crafted piece of work." --Frances C. Fowler, Miami of Ohio University, Educational Researcher, 3/1/2003 "Presents the results of what has been called the most comprehensive study on vouchers conducted to date." -- Education Week, 8/7/2002 "This study is based on the best experimental arrangements on voucher programs to date. The results are intriguing and will generate very healthy debate. It is must reading for anyone interested in the battle over vouchers in America." --John Witte, University of WisconsinMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
ISBN-13
978-0-8157-0214-6 (9780815702146)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions

Book
02/2006
2nd Edition
Brookings Institution
€34.20
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Persons
William G. Howell is an associate professor in the Government Department at Harvard University and deputy director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard. Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard, the director of PEPG, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is author or editor of numerous books, including The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools , with William G. Howell (Brookings, 2004 and 2006). He is coeditor (with Martin West) of No Child Left Behind? The Practice and Politics of School Accountability (Brookings, 2003).