Re: vouchers strike out again

["Horn, James" <jhorn@monmouth.edu>]

I love it, Jerry--"when the going gets tough, the Right gets Peterson."

Here's my take:
Despite the fact that a new ED study on vouchers in D.C .was directed by the Walmart-funded Professor and 21st Century Chair in School Choice of an academic department devoted to "choice" advocacy, which was bought and built by Sam Walton and headed by Jay P. Greene (of Manhattan Institute fame);

and despite the fact that 20% of the students enrolled in the program left within the first year (and no researcher asked why);

and despite the fact that student academic performance was no better in the private voucher schools;

and despite the fact that there was students felt no more satisfied or safe than did public school students;

and despite the fact that there was no evidence found that students were, in fact, safer in terms of "actual school experiences with dangerous activities";

despite all of this, Sam Dillon chooses a headline, "Voucher Use in Washington Wins Praise by Parents," that points to the only positive finding that voucher advocates like Spellings and her researchers could dredge up.

For a more balanced account, see Paley's "Voucher Students See Few Gains in First Year" in WaPo.

Congressman Miller, I think, sums it up: "This report offers even more proof that private school vouchers won't improve student achievement and are nothing more than a tired political gimmick."


-----Original Message-----
From: arn-l-owner@interversity.org on behalf of GERALD BRACEY
Sent: Fri 6/22/2007 8:42 AM
To: arn-l@interversity.org; LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [arn-l] vouchers strike out again
 
VOUCHERS STRIKE OUT AGAIN

New York, Dayton, Washington, D. C., Cleveland, Milwaukee, Florida, and now Washington again.  Kids who use publicly or privately funded vouchers to attend private schools don't do any better in school than matched groups of public school children.  You wonder how many at bats these guys are going to get.  I guess when the club owners are people like George W. Bush, John Boehner, and James Leininger the answer is "infinite" (Leininger spent millions trying to influence voting in Texas to stack a legislature that would give him the vouchers he's been chasing for 20 years. See Chapter 2, James Leininger, Sugar Daddy of the Religious Right in The Anatomy of Power: Texas and the Religious Right in 2006.  Put the title in Google).

I guess if the names are George F. Will, Paul Peterson, or Joe Bast (Heartland Institute), the answer is also infinite simply due their infinite hatred for the National Education Association.  Freud would have a field day with these guys.

The latest Washington debacle has to be especially disappointing to voucher proponents simply because it's the latest.  You'd think they would have learned something from all those earlier tryouts I named earlier.  

Maggie Spellings was her usual inelegant self:  "The report's findings are in step with rigorous studies of other voucher programs which have not typically found impacts on student achievement in the first year.  We know that parents are pleased with the success of the program in providing effective education alternatives."  And just how might you be defining "effective" Ms. Spellings?  

Paul, when-the-going-gets-tough-the-Right-gets-Peterson, Peterson echoed Spellings "Kids lose ground when they change schools.  Even if they may be in a better school, they're not going to adjust right off the bat."  Well, Paul, live and learn, I guess.  This is the first time I've heard you or any other voucher vulture invoke adjustment as an excuse for the poor showing.

And he and Maggie are wrong.  Peterson's own data show them wrong.  Peterson claimed sizeable first year gains in Cleveland.  Of course, he used fall-to-spring testing and had no control group so it wasn't exactly a randomized field trial.  Later, better studies by Kim Metcalf and a team from Indiana University found the public school kids starting out behind and catching up even though white students were overrepresented in the voucher groups.  

In Peterson's studies in Dayton and DC, Peterson got a "significant" effect in math-at the .10 level, a level not used by most researchers.  By the second year, math had moved up to .05.  Reading never showed any gain and by the third year everything had washed out.  

Amit Paley's article in the Washington Post says the Bush administration will attempt to expend vouchers nationwide in the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.  No doubt.  Bush had them in there to start with, lost them to Kennedy, and was unable to get them reinserted despite six old college tries by Boehner.

But, hey, in a faith-based administration (see Ron Suskind, "Without a Doubt", New York Times Magazine October 17, 2004) what's a little negative data among prayer-mates?

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