Ongoing Evaluation of Milwaukee Choice Program Finds Students Achieving on Same Level as Peers

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – University of Arkansas researchers presented information today, April 7, in Madison, Wisc., from a study that found students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program scored at similar levels as their peers not participating in the school choice program. The comparison was made two years after large panels of students in the program and students in the Milwaukee public school system had been carefully matched to each other.

The evaluation project represents the most comprehensive evaluation of school choice in a single place ever attempted, said Patrick J. Wolf, University of Arkansas professor of education reform and holder of an endowed chair in school choice. Wolf leads the School Choice Demonstration Project, a national research organization based at the University of Arkansas that is conducting the evaluation.

"We still have two more years of data to collect for this longitudinal study," Wolf said, "but at this point the voucher students are showing average rates of achievement gain similar to their public school peers."

The evaluation also found that, while students in the choice program perform at levels roughly comparable to similarly income-disadvantaged students in the Milwaukee public school system, they perform better than low-income students in other U.S. urban areas. Families in the choice program reported that their child's commitment to education and study habits are more important harbingers of academic success to them than are test scores.

Dozens of private schools have left the school choice program over the past few years, either because they violated state regulations or failed to attract enough students. The research team concluded that the private schools driven from the program had much lower student test scores than the schools still participating in the choice program.

The research team also looked at the effect of the school choice program on racial segregation in the city's public and private schools. They found that school choice in Milwaukee has neither worsened nor improved the levels of racial segregation.

Once completed in 2012, the results of the longitudinal Milwaukee voucher research project are expected to answer many questions about the effect voucher systems can have on improving academic achievement and other important student and family outcomes. The data are expected to assist education officials and policymakers around the country as they consider implementing voucher programs.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was the first urban school voucher program of its kind when it started in 1990. In 2008-09, the year studied in this round of reports, the program enrolled 19,803 students in 127 private schools through the use of vouchers.

Researchers with the University of Arkansas; the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Westat, a contract research organization based in Rockville, Md.; the University of Kentucky; Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.; Furman University in Greenville, S.C.; Young Harris (Ga.) College; Qwaku & Associates; and the Manhattan Institute make up Wolf's team. Several members presented the reports today to an audience of policymakers, academics and other education stakeholders at a forum at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The reports are available online at http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/SCDP.html.

The research team is looking at the effects of the voucher program on such outcomes as student achievement, parent and student satisfaction, civic values and how parents and students experience the program. The five-year evaluation also will determine the systemic effects of the choice program on education finance, public schools, non-participating students, private school capacity and school-level racial integration.

The next set of reports will include an assessment of the effects of the Milwaukee choice program on high school graduation rates.