The article was posted today and is at:

http://jaypgreene.com/2008/05/03/more-special-ed-voucher-study/

More recently, the Friedman Foundation has shown that progress in the F schools slowed after the Florida Supreme Court disbanded the program.

But the book cited only one source here: A Century Foundation report by Rick Kahlenberg that 1) merely eyeballed a chart of 2005 NAEP scores (not even trying to account for selection effects), and 2) lauded Wake County’s plan even while admitting that he couldn’t compare scores from before and after the plan!

As I pointed out — again, with no answer — Mr. Anrig would rightly be upset if a voucher advocate said that the “research is so clear” that vouchers raise test scores, but then cited nothing other than an anecdotal report that compared raw test scores without either controlling for other factors or even looking at pre-voucher scores.

Thanks for correcting my typos.

1. We’ve already had this discussion before (on the TPM Book Club site that seems to have disappeared). You know full well that there are lots of other voucher studies out there — the Florida study I mentioned; Angrist et al., etc. — so there’s no need for me to rehash all of that here. True, none of them promise that vouchers are a silver bullet, but it’s still incomplete to try to suggest that the research is uniformly negative. The research is neutral at worst, and mildly positive elsewhere.

And that’s just on test scores. I presume you don’t think education is solely and exclusively a function of test scores, do you? Most liberals claim to value autonomy and private choice, which are good in and of themselves even if they don’t produce higher math scores.

2. As to Wake County, you say, “To my knowledge, no one has questioned the validity of the positive results either in my article or in Rick’s much more extensive work.”

I’m not “questioning” the results.
Kahlenberg’s anecdote sounds great, and I’m all for socioeconomic integration. That said, you don’t deny that it’s one anecdote, not an experimental study that controlled for other factors. No hardheaded empirical thinker would hold a preferred policy to such a low standard while demanding that another policy (vouchers) be shown in 100% of experimental studies to raise test scores.

As for Florida’s A-plus program, there’s considerable disagreement about the extent to which the positive results there relate to pressures induced by the stigma of being labeled as a failing school versus the threat of vouchers. It is also is unclear how sustainable the observed effects will be and why they occurred. Now that the Florida Supreme Court struck down the voucher component, that uncertainty will remain.

The “anecdote” is about Wake County, NC — not Wake Forest — and my colleague’s last name is spelled “Kahlenberg” with a “b.” To my knowledge, no one has questioned the validity of the positive results either in my article or in Rick’s much more extensive work.

More generally, there is a broad consensus based on abundant research over decades that low-income students who move from high-poverty to middle-class schools demonstrate improved performance. Cross-district voluntary integration plans like those in St. Louis, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and elsewhere have been both academically successful and popular.

Since moving low-income students via vouchers from high-poverty public schools to high-poverty private schools doesn’t seem to be accomplishing much, isn’t it time to move on to strategies that have actually worked that are oriented toward enabling low-income children to attend middle class schools?

Even more oddly, Anrig’s suggested solution — which he flogs at every opportunity — rests on a single anecdotal story that Rick Kahlengerg tells about Wake Forest. As has been pointed out to Anrig before, if you’re going to demand that vouchers meet a high empirical hurdle in experimental studies, it makes no sense to turn around and wax eloquent about the hope presented by a anecdote that didn’t control for anything.

http://takingnote.tcf.org/2008/05/no-regrets.html