The Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Summary of Fourth Year Reports

The eyes of the nation were on the state of Wisconsin, as Republican policymakers locked horns with the teachers union over reforms. The Republicans needed just one Democrat to break ranks in order for them to pass far-reaching policy changes. They finally got their wish when Representative Annette “Polly” Williams (D, Milwaukee) came over to their side. Surprised? That’s because the year was 1990, not 2011, and the farreaching policy reform was the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP)

The Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Summary of Third Year Reports

The city of Milwaukee is often called a laboratory for experimentation with parental school choice. Milwaukee is home to the first urban school voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), which has grown over the past 19 years to enroll 19,803 students in 127 different private schools in 2008-09. A total of 59 public charter schools operate within the city’s boundaries, enrolling 17,158 students last year. Even students in the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system have a variety of magnet, community, open enrollment, and inter-district school choice options available to them, so long as transportation funding holds out. When one thinks of school choice in America, one thinks of Milwaukee

The Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Summary of Second Year Reports

The city of Milwaukee is often called a laboratory for experimentation with parental school choice. Milwaukee is home to the first urban school voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), which has grown over the past 18 years to enroll 19,069 students in 124 different private schools 2007-08. A total of 58 public charter schools operate within the city’s boundaries, enrolling 17,549 students last year. Even students in the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system have a variety of magnet, community, open enrollment, and even inter-district school choice options available to them, so long as transportation funding holds out. When one thinks of school choice in America, one thinks of Milwauke

The Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Summary of Baseline Reports

Provides an overview of the MPCP and summarizes topical baseline reports on its fiscal impact in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, on participating schools, on annual test scores, and on the voucher schools' effects on participating students and parents

Charter School Funding: Inequity in New York City

Charter schools have been a part of the educational landscape in New York City since the first New York charter school opened in Harlem in 1999. We define a charter school as any school that (1) operates based on a formal charter in place of direct school district management and (2) reports its finances independently from the school district. We define all other public schools as district schools. According to the New York State Department of Education (NYSDoE), New York City was home to 1,575 district and 183 charter schools in Fiscal Year 2014 (FY2014). Seven percent of all public school students in New York City attended charter schools that year

How has the Louisiana Scholarship Program Affected students? A Comprehensive Summary of Effects After Three Years

School choice reforms comprise a broad category of policies aimed at improving public education through the introduction of market forces that expand customer choice and competition between schools. Here we summarize our research to date on the effects of a large statewide school voucher initiative, the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), and draw the following conclusions: • Overall, participating in the LSP had no statistically significant impact on student English Language Arts (ELA) or math scores after using an LSP scholarship for three years. • The subgroup of students who were lower achieving before applying to the program did show significant gains in ELA after three years of scholarship usage. Students applying to lower grades demonstrated significant losses in math. • Students without disabilities were less likely to be identified to receive special education services if they participated in the LSP than if they did not. Students with disabilities were more likely to be de-identified as requiring special education services if they participated in the private school choice program. • The private schools that chose to participate in the LSP were disproportionately Catholic, had low tuitions, had low enrollments, and served a high percentage of minority students. We discuss these findings in the remainder of this brief and in greater detail in the three accompanying technical reports. Combined with prior evidence, these results are informative about the specific design of voucher and other choice policies and about how the effects of choice evolve over time as programs mature

The Effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program on Student Achievement After Two Years

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a statewide initiative offering publicly-funded vouchers to enroll in local private schools to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250 percent of the poverty line. Initially established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012. This paper examines the experimental effects of using an LSP scholarship to enroll in a private school on student achievement in the first two years following the program’s expansion. Our results indicate that the use of an LSP scholarship has negatively impacted both ELA and math achievement, although only the latter estimates are statistically significant. Moreover, we observe less negative effect estimates in the second year of the program

Milwaukee Longitudinal School Choice Evaluation: Annual School Testing Summary Report 2010-11

Effective at the start of the 2010-11 school year, 2009 Wisconsin Act 28 requires private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) to administer the state test, the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations (WKCE) in reading, mathematics and science to all MPCP pupils in the same grades as public school students tested under Title 1 of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Prior to the 2010-11 school year, 2005 Wisconsin Act 125 required private schools participating in the MPCP to administer a nationally normed standardized test of their choosing annually in reading, mathematics, and science to the MPCP students enrolled in the 4th, 8th, and 10th grades. Schools are currently given the option to continue to administer other nationally normed tests if they wish, in addition to the WKCE. The law further directs MPCP schools to submit copies of the test scores from all tests and examinations administered to their pupils in 2010-11 to the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) for processing and reporting to the Legislative Audit Bureau. During the 2010-11 school year, all 102 MPCP schools that were required to administer tests did so and provided the results to the SCDP. Specifically, the SCDP received 10,657 WKCE test scores. Sixty-three schools submitted only the WKCE test scores and the remaining 39 schools submitted both nationally normed tests, such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the WKCE. Five MPCP schools were not required to send in scores as they enrolled no MPCP students in mandatory testing grades

The Impact of the Louisiana Scholarship Program on Racial Segregation in Louisiana Schools

The question of how school choice programs affect the racial stratification of schools is highly salient in the field of education policy. We use a student-level panel data set to analyze the impacts of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on racial segregation in public and private schools. This targeted school voucher program provides funding for low-income, mostly minority students in the lowest-graded public schools to enroll in participating private schools. Our analysis indicates that the vast majority (82%) of LSP transfers have reduced racial segregation in the voucher students’ former public schools. LSP transfers have marginally increased segregation in the participating private schools, however, where just 45% of transfers reduce racial segregation. In those school districts under federal desegregation orders, voucher transfers result in a large reduction in traditional public schools’ racial segregation levels and have no discernible impact on private schools. The results of this analysis provide reliable empirical evidence that parental choice actually has aided desegregation efforts in Louisiana

How has the Louisiana Scholarship Program Affected Students? A Comprehensive Summary of Effects After Two Years

Louisiana, a state whose educational performance has lagged behind national averages for decades, began its experiment with publicly financed scholarships for students to attend private schools in 2008. The pilot version of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) was expanded statewide with the passage of Act 2 of the 2012 Louisiana state legislative session. Nearly 10,000 students applied to the expanded program in 2012-13, with roughly 5,000 applicants receiving scholarships. The program has continued its rapid expansion every year since then, with nearly 7,500 scholarships awarded in the 2014-15 school year