THE EDUCATION GAP:
Vouchers and Urban Schools
by William G. Howell and Paul E. Peterson
Brookings Institution, 275 pp, $28.95
Education researchers William Howell, Paul Peterson, Patrick Wolf, and
David Campbell have the good luck to publish The Education Gap,
a book of research on school vouchers, just when the Supreme Court's Zelman
vs. Simmons-Harris decision has focused attention on that issue. The
court's ruling that vouchers for religious schools do not violate the
constitution on church-state grounds returned the contentious voucher
debate to the core issue of how vouchers affect children's learning. For
this reason alone, The Education Gap is of interest to policymakers,
educators, and parents considering the voucher question. However, the
authors' goal is not simply to quantify whether or not vouchers improve
achievement, but to address this issue in the broader context of the vexing
achievement gap between African-American and white children in public
education. And it's the points they raise about that gap, the nature of
inner-city public and private schools, and how parents approach school
choice, rather than the issue of vouchers in itself, that make this book
worth reading.
The core of The Education Gap is the findings of a multi-year
study of voucher programs in New York City; Dayton, Ohio; and Washington,
D.C. These privately funded programs provided "scholarships"
to cover a portion (from $1,400 to $2,000) of private school tuition for
a small number of students in each city (from 680 in Dayton to 1,650 in
New York).
Unlike much voucher "research" driven by ideological goals,
The Education Gap is serious work. It's often difficult to measure
whether vouchers improve achievement because students who seek them may
have greater motivation, more supportive parents, or other qualities that
make them more likely than non-voucher students to succeed. The Education
Gap circumvents this problem by studying only students who applied
for vouchers. Because there were more applicants than vouchers available,
vouchers were assigned randomly by lottery, making voucher and non-voucher
student groups comparable.
The authors provide descriptive information about the programs, children
who applied, the public and private schools they attended, parent satisfaction,
and how parents chose whether or not to use vouchers (a striking number
of recipients ultimately did not). But most readers will focus on the
achievement results: African-American children who used vouchers had significantly
better achievement scores than their peers who did not, but there was
no difference for white or Hispanic children.
Such findings are not unprecedented. Since the 1970s, researchers have,
with surprising consistency, found better outcomes for African-American
students in private, particularly Catholic, schools vs. public schools.
For other students, however, the evidence is mixed at best. Since the
achievement gap between African-American and white children is a persistent
and vexing problem of American public education, understanding this phenomenon
could lead to better education policy.
Unfortunately, The Education Gap can't produce a compelling explanation
for why private schools raise achievement for African-American but not
other students, and that's where it falls short. Instead, the authors
offer a "differential theory of school choice," where vouchers
are more likely to benefit black students because "African-American
families send their children to the least desirable public schools because
of more limited incomes and racial discrimination in the housing market."
But this explanation is unsatisfying; while African-Americans overall
have lower incomes and attend poorer schools than whites, the students
in this study were not a representative sample of white or African-American
children: All of them came from low-income families in inner cities
with poor public schools.
Nor can the authors explain why vouchers did not improve achievement
among Hispanics, who have comparable incomes and wealth to African-Americans
and are also subject to discrimination. Indeed, one might expect the predominantly
Catholic private schools involved to work best for Hispanic students,
who are in many ways similar to the immigrant groups Catholic schools
originally served. And, though private schools were less likely than public
schools to provide services for non-English-speaking students, an analysis
of only English -- proficient Hispanic students also found no achievement
gains from vouchers.
Children who moved from public to private schools experienced smaller
classes, smaller schools, and fewer disciplinary problems as a result.
African-American children benefited the most. But it's unclear whether
the public schools African-American students came from were worse or the
private schools to which they switched were better than those of white
and Hispanic children. And differences in school quality don't fully explain
the difference in achievement impacts for African-American vs. other children.
Indeed, given the truly abominable state of many inner-city schools, it's
surprising that even marginally better private schools didn't improve
achievement for non-black voucher recipients.
Clearly, these issues are more complex than the rhetoric on both sides
of the voucher debate implies. Neither those who hail vouchers as a silver
bullet nor those who oppose them on achievement grounds are "right"
because vouchers are not a coherent education reform strategy, merely
a different way of financing and assigning students to existing schools.
Broad pronouncements about vouchers are foolish because impact depends
on the individual schools available and the choices parents make. Poor
parents with vouchers still face limited educational choices. To be credible
(and, perhaps, constitutional) voucher supporters must expand the supply
of options. Practically speaking, for political and policy reasons, that
means choice within the public sector. It's worth noting that many parents
who won the voucher lottery ultimately declined vouchers, and where public
charter schools were available, many opted instead for them.
Ultimately, this book can't answer the most important questions: What's
different for African-American children in private schools, and can this
difference be adapted to public schools, or is it inherent in private
schools' private or religious natures? Do low-income African-American
students need something different educationally, and if so, how can schools
do them justice without resorting to divisive race-based practices? Because,
except for their most fervent supporters, few argue that vouchers are
a large-scale education reform; vouchers are tangential to these issues.
Thus, while The Education Gap makes an important contribution by
injecting some research into the often theoretical or purely emotional
debate over the impact of school choice, it raises more questions than
it answers.
