Georgia’s Promise Scholarship just completed its initial application window, and interest was strong. While state officials are still reviewing applications, we know thousands of parents applied for $6,500 to help them move their children from public school to another educational setting that fits them better.
Other states have seen demand for such programs begin small and then grow significantly. Georgia will probably follow suit. There are many reasons for these relatively slow starts: Not all eligible families hear about these programs at first, and some don’t know about alternatives to their local public schools.
Still others simply want to know: Will this really help my child?
The vast majority of research into school-choice programs suggests participating students will be better off – or at least not worse off. Yet, the relatively few negative findings get disproportionate publicity. Among them is a study from several years ago finding students in Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program had lower test scores than their peers in public schools.
But a new study for the Urban Institute suggests that finding may have been misguided. These latest results should encourage any Georgia families still considering the Promise Scholarship.
While the previous Ohio study focused on scores on the state’s standardized test, the new one looks at whether EdChoice students were more likely to attend and complete college than similar public school students. Its findings are striking:
- 64% of voucher students enrolled in college, compared to 48% of similar public school students;
- 23% of voucher students earned a bachelor’s degree, compared to 15% of similar public school students;
- voucher students were more likely to enroll in all types of colleges – but the differences were particularly large for four-year colleges (both public and private) and selective colleges;
- and the longer students used a voucher, the more likely they were to attend and complete college.
Regarding college enrollment, “impacts are strongest for male students, black students, students with below-median test scores before leaving public school, and students who spent the most time in poverty during their childhood,” the researchers wrote. “The EdChoice impact on college graduation was 10 percentage points for both (white and black students), but that increase corresponds to a 136% increase for black students compared with 79% for white students.”
Here’s the kicker: The students who used the EdChoice voucher weren’t the only ones who benefited.
While the program was recently expanded to cover all Ohio students, the Urban Institute study covered a cohort of participants from a time when eligibility was “largely limited to low-income students from struggling public schools.”
That’s analogous to Georgia’s Promise Scholarship, which requires participants to live in the attendance zone of a school in the bottom 25% of the state academically. It also means the researchers could compare EdChoice participants not only to all similarly situated students across Ohio, but specifically to students who stayed in the same struggling public schools that EdChoice participants left.
“Students in public schools who were eligible for EdChoice experienced modestly higher college attendance and graduation rates, even though gains in standardized test scores appear limited,” the researchers wrote. “The effects are particularly pronounced for black students and students from low-income families.”
In other words, the mere existence of opportunity for students – or perhaps the threat of competition for their public schools – spurred improvements for voucher users and non-users alike.
Why the discrepancy between these findings and earlier ones? It may indicate, the researchers said, “that state tests might not be an ideal metric for evaluating private school quality, given curricular differences between sectors and different incentives to perform on state exams between public schools that faced accountability for their students’ performance on these exams versus private schools that did not.”
In any case, while test scores are useful metrics, most parents would prefer that their children have a chance to make the most of themselves after high school – whether that’s college or another pursuit.
Giving more students that chance is one of the most important things our state can do.
