Participation Patterns in Private School Choice Programs in the U.S.: States, Schools, Students

Private choice programs provide government resources to qualified families to enable them to enroll their children in private schools of their choosing. “Gold standard” experimental studies have found overall mixed impacts of voucher programs, one form of private school choice arrangements, on student academic achievement. Yet, these results face external validity challenges, as both states, schools, and students can choose to participate in private choice programs, generating selection issues. This dissertation focuses on the decision-making of states, schools, and students in participating in private school choice programs. The first study estimates the effect of state-level social factors on private school choice program adoption and expansion. Results indicate that political factors dominate predictions of policy adoption, and once enacted the program expansions tend to be driven by educational needs within states rather than their political environment. Also, individual tax-credits/deduction policies show a different logit in terms of program adoption and expansion than other types of private school choice programs. The second paper examines private school participation patterns in voucher programs in DC, Indiana, and Louisiana for 2014-15 school year. Results reveal that higher tuition levels and larger cohort enrollments, conditions normally associated with high quality schools, help identify schools that are less likely to participate in voucher programs. Further, private schools in D.C. and Louisiana, the two states that have higher regulatory burdens, are less likely to participate in their voucher programs compared to private schools in less-regulated Indiana. The last paper focuses on student participation patterns in the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). Specifically, we investigate if there is any systematic pattern regarding program attrition. Little evidence is found that more disadvantaged students, economically and academically, are “cream skimmed” into or “pushed out” of the voucher program. Students with lower baseline test scores, however, do tend to face a greater risk of leaving the LSP, as do students who were assigned private schools farther from home and schools that serve larger minority populations. Results indicate that in the LSP, students’ self-selections into and out of the program are driven more by the program design rather than by their personal demographics

Do You Get Cream with Your Choice? Characteristics of Students Who Moved into or Out of the Louisiana Scholarship Program

Private school choice programs often are accused of failing to serve disadvantaged students. Critics claim that participating private schools “skim the cream off the top” by admitting only the best students and “push out” students who are the most difficult to teach. This study tests these student selection hypotheses in the context of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). We find LSP applicants are less advantaged than their public school peers regarding their family socioeconomic status and initial test scores. No consistent evidence indicates that the LSP private schools are “skimming the cream” or “pushing out” students based on their family social status or initial test scores. However, students with disabilities are less likely than students without disabilities to use a voucher initially. Students who were placed in LSP private schools that were farther from their homes or that serve a larger minority population are more likely to leave their LSP schools than LSP students placed in schools closer to their homes or that serve smaller minority populations. LSP students with better educational resources in their residential public school district are more likely to leave the LSP than students with worse educational resources. Finally, the LSP students still using vouchers after three years are more likely to have a low family income, more likely to be African American, and more likely to be female than the population of non-applicants to the program

Supplying Choice: An Analysis of School Participation Decisions in Voucher Programs in DC, Indiana, and Louisiana

Since school voucher funds are public, policymakers fiercely debate how those funds should be spent. A goal of many decision-makers is to ensure that every private school option is “highquality” through program accountability regulations. Private schools, however, have a say in the matter. They can decide whether or not to participate in a private school choice program and likely factor the type and level of program regulations into that decision. We examine the impacts of private school regulations on the supply-side of voucher programs in D.C., Indiana, and Louisiana. Private schools value their autonomy. Therefore, we expect that regulatory burden will be negatively associated with the quality of schools that choose to participate in a choice program. Independent private schools that accept substantial regulation from the state are likely to be financially distressed and more willing to change their educational model in exchange for access to voucher-funded students. We employ a linear probability model to examine how school quality, as measured by tuition-level and Great School Review scores, is associated with program participation for schools. Our results largely confirm our hypothesis that higher tuition levels and larger cohort enrollments, conditions normally associated with high quality schools, identify schools that are less likely to participate in voucher programs. We also find a consistent negative relationship between Great Schools Review score and the school participation decision, indicating lower quality schools have a higher tendency of participating in voucher programs in all three states, however the coefficients are not significantly different from zero. State fixed effects reveal that private schools in D.C. and Louisiana, the two states that have higher regulatory burdens, are less likely to participate in voucher programs

How has the Louisiana Scholarship Program Affected Students? A Comprehensive Summary of Effects after Four Years

School choice has long been a subject of robust debate. Private school vouchers—programs providing public funds for students to attend K-12 private schools—tend to be the most contentious form of school choice. Over the past three years, our research team has released a series of reports examining how the LSP has affected key student and community conditions