Nations only federally funded voucher program has negative effect on student achievement, study f

[riversedge]

Source: WashPost





Students in the nation’s only federally funded school voucher initiative performed worse on standardized tests within a year after entering D.C. private schools than peers who did not participate, according to a new federal analysis that comes as President Trump is seeking to pour billions of dollars into expanding the private school scholarships nationwide.

The study, released Thursday by the Education Department’s research division, follows several other recent studies of state-funded vouchers in Louisiana, Indiana and Ohio that suggested negative effects on student achievement. Critics are seizing on this data as they try to counter Trump’s push to direct public dollars to private schools.

Vouchers, deeply controversial among supporters of public education, are direct government subsidies parents can use as scholarships for private schools. These payments can cover all or part of the annual tuition bills, depending on the school.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has long argued that vouchers help poor children escape from failing public schools. But Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, said that DeVos should heed the department’s Institute of Education Sciences. Given the new findings, Murray said, “it’s time for her to finally abandon her reckless plans to privatize public schools across the country.”......................

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/federal-study-of-dc-voucher-program-finds-negative-impact-on-student-achievement/2017/04/27/e545ef28-2536-11e7-bb9d-8cd6118e1409_story.html?utm_term=.dcbf599d2591

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More and more studies are showing no difference or, as above, Negative effects of voucher programs/schools. Yet, we have DeVos!!!-pushing for more tax $ for these programs

[Ligyron]

1. I understand DeVoss really screwed up things in Michagen.

I've not heard one good thing about their attempts to "improve" public education.

[ProudLib72]

2. If the voucher system is nation wide

then every schoolkid will perform equally badly and we will have reached a new equilibrium. Eight graders will perform at the old fourth grade level; HS seniors will perform at a middle school level.

The burden will, again, be shifted to colleges, which will have to create hundreds of new developmental programs to take up the slack. But colleges are now run on a business model, and customers (students) become frustrated at having to take a lot of developmental reading, writing and arithmetic classes. So retention rates fall, and administration calls on the department chairs to solve the issue. Department chairs stick low performing students in classes they have no business being in. The final cog in this line of passing the burden is the teacher. That teacher has to ask himself, "Do I fail half my students, which is the right thing to do but will make me look bad, or do I let them slide through and hope the next professor catches them?"

[MyOwnPeace]

3. The "voucher" program..........

is the Reich's way of privatizing YOUR public schools - taking money FROM the schools (that YOU pay for) and giving it to religious (hmmm, something about "separation of church/state" ring a bell?), for-profit corporations, and others that want to run under the "non-cover" of accountability and leave YOUR public schools even poorer.

And now the SUCKretary of Education is the chief cheerleader for the movement.

[AngryAmish]

4. Student achievement is based on the educability of the children in the school

In other words smart kids score better than dumb kids. But everyone knows that.

[Igel]

5. Devil's in the details for this kind of study.

For older kids, it made no difference.

For kids from high-performing schools, moving to schools that don't even have to be accredited for another 4 years hurt them. For kids from low-performing schools, it didn't matter.

Again, charter schools =/= charter schools. Some are good, some are horrible, some are mediocre. One chain of charter schools does significantly better than all but the best public schools. Other charter schools warehouse kids who'd flunk out in a public school.

The question has to be, What's best for an individual student? Not the usual, "What's best for public school funding or for public-school teacher jobs?" We often confuse the two questions and assume that they must have the same answer, when we're asking about funding but phrasing it in terms of what's good for students.