‘Private school vouchers and student achievement: an evaluation of the Milwaukee parent choice program.’
Quarterly Journal of Economics 113, No. 2, pp. 553-602
Assesses the educational benefits to children who used vouchers in the Milwaukee voucher program.
Compares the test scores of students given vouchers with those of unsuccessful applicants and other pupils in public schools.
Key results:
The results suggest that the maths scores of students in the choice schools increased an additional 2.4 percentile points per year, an effect which is statistically significant at the 5% level.
However attending a private school with a voucher is not found to have a significant effect on students’ reading skills.
This paper is part of the rather inconclusive literature on the Milwaukee voucher program. Sharply conflicting estimates are obtained depending on the assumptions made to deal with selective attrition of lottery losers from the sample (this is briefly discussed in e.g. Cullen, Jacob & Levitt, 2003).
