Vouchers — a disaster for schools

15 Dec, 2013 at 22:01 | Posted in Education & School | Comments Off on Vouchers — a disaster for schools

Henry M. Levin — distinguished economist and director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University — recently reviewed the evidence about the effects of vouchers, initiated twenty years ago in the Swedish school system:

In 1992 Sweden adopted a voucher-type plan in which municipalities would provide the same funding per pupil to either public schools or independent (private) schools. There were few restrictions for independent schools, and religious or for-profit schools were eligible to participate. In 1994, choice was also extended to that of public schools where parents could choose either a public or private school. In the early years, only about 2 percent of students chose independent schools. However, since the opening of this century, independent school enrollments have expanded considerably. By 2011-12 almost a quarter of elementary and secondary students were in independent schools. Half of all students in the upper secondary schools in Stockholm were attending private schools at public expense.

On December 3, 2012, Forbes Magazine recommended for the U.S. that: “…we can learn something about when choice works by looking at Sweden’s move to vouchers.” On March 11 and 12, 2013, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences did just that by convening a two day conference to learn what vouchers had accomplished in the last two decades … The following was my verdict:

• On the criterion of Freedom of Choice, the approach has been highly successful. Parents and students have many more choices among both public schools and independent schools than they had prior to the voucher system.

• On the criterion of productive efficiency, the research studies show virtually no difference in achievement between public and independent schools for comparable students. Measures of the extent of competition in local areas also show a trivial relation to achievement. The best study measures the potential choices, public and private, within a particular geographical area. For a 10 percent increase in choices, the achievement difference is about one-half of a percentile. Even this result must be understood within the constraint that the achievement measure is not based upon standardized tests, but upon teacher grades. The so-called national examination result that is also used in some studies is actually administered and graded by the teacher with examination copies available to the school principal and teachers well in advance of the “testing”. Another study found no difference in these achievement measures between public and private schools, but an overall achievement effect for the system of a few percentiles. Even this author agreed that the result was trivial.

In evaluating these results, we must also keep in mind that the overall performance of the system on externally administered and evaluated tests used for international comparisons showed substantial declines over the last fifteen years for Sweden. For those who are interested in the patterns of achievement decline across subjects and grades, I have provided the enclosed powerpoint presentation …

• With respect to equity, a comprehensive, national study sponsored by the government found that socio-economic stratification had increased as well as ethnic and immigrant segregation. This also affected the distribution of personnel where the better qualified educators were drawn to schools with students of higher socio-economic status and native students. The international testing also showed rising variance or inequality in test scores among schools. No evidence existed to challenge the rising inequality. Accordingly, I rated the Swedish voucher system as negative on equity.

Among the industrialized countries, only three have a universal voucher or choice system Chile, Holland, and Sweden. Some would also argue that Belgium qualifies in this category. The former three countries have very different designs with the Dutch system being the most highly regulated and devoting the most attention to equity. Even so, the tracking that takes place at age 12 in the Netherlands between vocational and academic secondary schools has important equity consequences in terms of socio-economic stratification. Although based upon choice, the available choices available to a student are heavily dependent on her achievement test results. The Chilean system has witnessed an increasingly notable stratification of the population, both within and between public and private sectors. Students from more educated and wealthier families are found in the private schools which receive public funding, but can choose which students to accept from among applicants. The Chilean system allows schools to charge additional fees beyond the voucher, also favoring more advantage families.