School Choice Makes D.C. Parents Happy
I am inclined to believe that there is substance to this study and that parents and children with choice in schools will be happier with the education they are getting.
From The Washington Post:
If it were up to the children and their parents, there’d be no question that the District’s five-year experiment with school vouchers would be renewed for an additional five years or more.
That’s the most emphatic finding of an independent evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program published last week. “The vast majority of families participating in this study are satisfied with the OSP in general, and their choice of new schools in particular,” the report found.
Here’s how one mother expressed it to researchers from Georgetown University and the University of Arkansas: “Before . . . his grades were below average, and for the first time he made the honor roll . . . He came home, he was so proud that he made the honor roll . . . They had the awards ceremony, so I wouldn’t tell him I was coming . . . When he came out he saw [my husband and me] sitting in the first row . . . He gave us this big grin; but to see him walk up there and receive that piece of paper, I mean you could see the joy all over him.”
But I have a problem with the design of the study.
…The government provided equal amounts of new money for vouchers, charter schools and traditional public schools, so there could be no contention that the vouchers were sapping resources from public education.
Congress told the District and the federal Education Department to evaluate the results, comparing the academic achievements of children who received vouchers with a control group of children who wanted vouchers but lost out in the raffle…
By comparing students who wanted the vouchers and won the raffle with students who wanted the vouchers and lost the raffle, they have already selected for groups where one is happy from the start and one is unhappy from the start. Being chosen for something we want in life predisposes people to be happy as opposed to being rejected.
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