-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Florida vouchers improved PUBLIC schools
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 09:06:00 -0800
From: Richard Rider <RichardRider@EconomyTelcom.com>
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>

http://reason.com/ml/ml021501.html

February 15, 2001

How Vouchers Passed Their Florida Test

By Michael W. Lynch

Debates over school choice are often framed as battles between low-income
parents struggling to find options for their children and under-funded
public schools desperate to keep their per-student funding. But a
just-released study by Jay P. Greene, a Manhattan Institute senior
fellow as well as a Harvard research fellow, finds that Florida's recent two-year
experience with limited school choice has actually improved public school
performance.

This is good news not only for Florida's families and educators, but for the
rest of America as well, because President George W. Bush's educational
proposal is similar to Florida's reform.

In July of 1999, Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed a law known as The A+ Plan
for Education. Under that plan, the state assigned each school a letter
grade based on its students' performances on the Florida Comprehensive
Achievement Test (FCAT). Schools earning F's would be given more money and
forced to develop a plan for improvement. Students in schools that earn F's
in any two years in a four year period, would be free to transfer to another
public school or to take a $3,400 voucher to use at a private school.

That fall, two failing elementary schools saw 53 of its students walk out
the door with vouchers in hand and another 85 transfer to better public
schools. (The law retroactively set the testing period to 1997-1998, thus
these two schools earned F's in that academic year and again in 1998-1999).
In total, 78 Florida schools earned F's for the 1998-1999 academic year, a
dismal performance that, if repeated, would have meant the freeing of 2000
students the following term. Yet the next year all 78 of these schools
managed to improve student performance, earning a D or better. (Meanwhile,
the number of 'A' schools increased from 203 to 551.)

On the face, it appears that school choice helped Florida's worst public
schools improve. A study last year by education writer Carol Innerst for a
consortium of non-profits, including the Urban League of Greater Miami and
the Center for Education Reform, chronicled the response of educators
working in failing schools. "People get lulled into complacency," Broward
County public schools official Carmen Varela-Russo told Innerst. "The jolt
of being labeled an 'F' school and the possibility of losing children to
private schools and other districts was a strong message to the whole
community. Labeling schools 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' 'D,' or 'F' caused some pain."

Yet the pain proved to be an effective motivator. Broward County schools
hired reading and math coaches to assist the students in its seven failing
schools, an educational enhancement that other districts adopted as well.
One district extended the school year, from 180 to 210 days, allowing more
time to work on fundamental skills.

Yet correlation does not imply cause, which is where Greene's study comes
in. He wanted to test whether the academic improvements stemmed from
vouchers, or from other factors.

Greene hypothesized that if the threat of losing students to vouchers
prompts schools to improve, then schools earning F's in any given year ought
to show more improvement than other schools. Schools earning passing grades
risked only embarrassment--or nothing at all--if student performance
remained stagnant or even declined. That's exactly what he found. Writes
Greene, "Schools that received F grades in 1998-1999 experienced increases
in test scores that were more than twice as large as those experienced by
schools with higher state grades."

A cautious researcher, Greene considered other explanations for the schools'
improvement, including statistical artifacts such as regression to the mean,
and the deliberate manipulation of test scores. But he found little
empirical support for these explanations. "It appears as if two forces were
in effect to motivate schools to improve," writes Greene. "Schools had some
motivation to improve simply to avoid the embarrassment of low FCAT scores.
This motivation operated across all state-assigned grades. But schools with
F scores had a second and very strong incentive to improve to avoid
vouchers." Green labels this second incentive the "voucher gain."

Greene's findings come at a critical time, as Washington policymakers debate
President Bush's education reform package. Like his brother's Florida plan,
it relies on testing to identify problem schools and assists these schools
with new money to improve performance. And like the Florida plan, the
ultimate sanction is an exit option for students in the form of a voucher,
should poor schools fail to improve over a three-year period.

However, the administration has indicated that it may be willing to back off
its controversial voucher plan. Last week, Secretary of Education Rod Paige
soothed an audience of worried school board members, assuring them that
vouchers are a "fractional part of the program." (In fact, it's fraction
approaching zero in the Senate, where an education reform package introduced
Tuesday didn't even include Bush's voucher proposal.)

Paige and others pushing Bush's education plan might consider another
rhetorical strategy, one that involves combining Greene's quantitative
findings with Innerst's qualitative findings to make the case that the
plan's voucher component is critical to the success of the education
package. Without the limited vouchers, the plan turns into another elaborate
scheme to reward failure; it merely sends ever more money to bad schools.
And--unlike Florida's experience with school choice--neither students nor
struggling public schools benefit from such an approach.

Michael W. Lynch (mwlynch@reason.com) is Washington Editor of REASON.
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