School Vouchers: A Critical View

A mong the many reforms proposed for K–12 education are changes in governance that would increase the power of parents to choose schools and thereby make the education system function more like a market. Within this set of reforms, which also includes offering greater choice among public schools and the opportunity to establish public “charter” schools, school voucher programs are particularly controversial because they would permit parents to use public funds to secure education not only at public schools, but also at private schools. Proponents and opponents disagree about the effects of voucher programs on student achievement, on the social and racial segregation of students and on disadvantaged students. In addition, they differ on the importance of maintaining the separation between religious private schools and the state. School voucher programs currently exist only on a small scale in the United States. The main publicly funded voucher programs are in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida. In addition, small privately funded programs provide vouchers for lowand moderate-income students in cities such as New York City, Dayton, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. Another privately funded program, the Children’s Scholarship Fund, operates at the national level. Recent studies based primarily on U.S. evidence typically conclude that the data are insufŽ cient to draw clear conclusions about the net effects of vouchers on academic achievement, access to schools, racial integration and civic education (for example, Ladd and Hansen, 1999; Levin, 2001; Campbell and Peterson, 2001; Gill et al., 2001). In the light of the limited U.S. experience, some authors support investments in large-scale voucher experiments as a way to generate more deŽnitive information on their effects. However, before making such investments, it would