Does school choice have a positive academic impact on participating students?
Yes. Studies conducted since the late 1990s convincingly show that school choice is an effective intervention and public policy for boosting student achievement and graduation rates. Nine studies using a method called random assignment, the gold standard in the social sciences, have found statistically significant gains in academic achievement from school vouchers, one study found improved graduation rates. No such study has ever found negative effects. One study’s findings were inconclusive. Random-assignment methods allow researchers to isolate the effects of vouchers from other student characteris¬tics. Students who applied for vouchers were entered into random lotteries to determine who would receive the voucher and who would remain in public schools; this allowed researchers to track very similar “treatment” and “control” groups, just like in medical trials. Highly respected random-assignment research has been conducted in five large cities: Milwaukee, Charlotte, Wash¬ington, D.C.
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