A new study shows the Ohio school choice program is producing better outcomes for students, the Wall Street Journal reports.
According to the Journal’s editorial board, researchers Matthew Chingos, David Figlio and Krzysztof Karbownik studied more than 6,000 Ohio students who used EdChoice scholarships to attend private schools between 2008 and 2015.
What the team found was that scholarship recipients were 15% more likely to attend college than public school students. Recipients were also 9% more likely to graduate.
Not only that, but students who were enrolled in the program for at least four years — about 60% of the total — had even higher college enrollment and graduation rates.
“A previous study found that EdChoice recipients had lower short-term scores on state assessments,” the Journal reported. “But as the authors note, positive long-term outcomes indicate 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.'”
The authors found that blacks, boys, students who experienced long-term childhood poverty, and students with below-median test scores before leaving public school benefited most.
“The rate of college enrollment among black scholarship recipients increased 18 percentage points, compared with 13 points for white students,” the Journal wrote. “Students who spent more than three-quarters of their life in poverty saw their rate of college attendance increase 17 percentage points, up to seven points higher than students from less impoverished backgrounds.”
Study backs up data from other analysis
The most recent study showing school choice improves outcomes is, perhaps, unsurprising, as it tracks with multiple other studies showing school choice works.
As the Sentinel reported in 2022, a study from Step Up for Students allays the concern that school choice won’t work in rural areas. The study of 30 rural Florida counties confirms that school choice enrollment is growing in rural Florida and that more options are available.
Its findings include:
- In 2021-22, 16.7 percent of students in Florida’s 30 rural counties attended something other than a district school, whether a private school, charter school or home education. That’s up from 10.6 percent a decade prior.
- The number of private school choice scholarships increased from 1,706 to 6,992 over the last decade.
- The number of private schools in Florida’s rural counties jumped from 69 to 120. Even in the most sparsely populated counties, choice is enabling supply to meet demand.
And even though private school enrollment share in Florida’s rural counties rose from 4.5% to 6.9%, total enrollment in rural district schools grew by 3.3%.
Fear that choice doesn’t work for rural students is a consistent topic in Kansas, and it was a major issue in a previous campaign cycle in Oklahoma. A story by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs Center for Independent Journalism says that opponents repeatedly claimed that allowing education funding to stay with the student would destroy rural schools and produce no benefit for most rural students.
“It’s a myth repeated so often, and for so long it’s come to be accepted as fact: School choice won’t work in rural areas,” wrote Ron Matus and Dava Hankerson, both officials with Step Up for Students. “But just like so many other myths about school choice — that it destroys traditional public schools, that it doesn’t lead to better academic outcomes, that it lacks accountability — the myth about school choice not working in rural areas doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.”
The study found that not only has school choice not significantly impacted public schools, but it has actually improved outcomes.
In early 2023, a previous study of the EdChoice program in Ohio found that, contrary to the usual claims, and consistent with the most recent study, choice benefits marginalized students most heavily.
The Fordham study, authored by Ohio State University professor Dr. Stéphane Lavertu, examined Ohio’s performance-based and income-based EdChoice programs.
The Executive Summary says, “Overall, the analysis provides solid evidence that the performance-based EdChoice program led to racial integration, had no adverse effects on revenues per pupil, and increased student achievement in public school districts. It also reveals no credible evidence that the income-based EdChoice expansion harmed districts in terms of segregation, revenues, or student achievement.”
Not only did public schools not lose money on a per-student basis, but academic achievement was higher across the board, and the program actually reduced racial and ethnic segregation by approximately 10 to 15 percent than it would have been had districts not been exposed to the program.
“Specifically, as a result of the EdChoice program, Black, Hispanic, and Native American students attended schools with a greater share of White and Asian American students than they would have in the absence of the program,” the Fordham study found. Moreover, while district enrollments were 10 to 15 percent lower than they otherwise would have been as well, total district spending per pupil (including both capital outlays and operational spending) was no different than it would have been had districts not been exposed to the EdChoice program. The reduction, according to the study, was largely driven by relative declines in the enrollment of Black students rather than Asian American, Hispanic, or White students.
In other words, a lot of Black and Hispanic students used the EdChoice programs to leave public schools and attend private schools.
