School vouchers’ greatest impact
A new study on the impact of school vouchers on college enrollments shows that the percentage of African-American students who enrolled part time or full time in college by 2011 was 24 percent higher for those who had won a school voucher lottery and used their voucher to attend a private school. The experimental study, conducted by researchers at Harvard University and the Brookings Institution, compared two groups of students: a group that entered private schools with the help of a voucher program in New York City in 1997, and a control group that did not win vouchers. The attrition rate from the study over a 14-year period was less than 1 percent, making it highly unlikely that attrition from the study biased the findings. The study is available online. Matthew M. Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul E. Peterson, director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, tracked students entering...