John F. Witte

Private school versus public school achievement: Are there findings that should affect the educational choice debate?

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to determine whether existing research allows us to answer a crucial question: are student achievement differences between public and private schools large enough and certain enough to be of relevance to policymakers considering choice proposals. To do this, I analyze research based on the High School and Beyond study. The argument of this paper is that there is little substantive evidence in this research that has policy relevance for educational choice. Specifically I argue that any differences in achievement between public and private schools that are statistically significant after properly modeling achievement gains are trivial in size and highly uncertain. I conclude by questioning whether High School and Beyond , or research similarly structured, will ever answer the question of whether public or private schools produce greater student achievement.

The Milwaukee Voucher Experiment

This article provides a summary of the results of the first five years of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which was the first program in the United States to allow students to attend private schools with public vouchers. I begin with a brief discussion of the theoretical and research issues. Following a description of the initial program and subsequent changes, I outline who participated in the program—including characteristics of students and families and schools. I then describe the results in terms of the effects on families, student outcomes, and schools. I conclude with a discussion of the implications for this type of program and more open-ended voucher programs. For those holding extreme positions on this controversial issue, there will be both ammunition and frustration, for the results contain both positive and negative elements. The quality of both the public and private schools and therefore student outcomes vary within and between schools, and that variance is more extreme than in middle-class or wealthy communities. Some schools are excellent, and families fight to get in them and stay in them. Some are so bad that they fail and, if they are private, cease to exist—often in mid-year. The general results of the voucher program follow that pattern: Some results are clearly positive, some can be interpreted either way, and others are negative.

A Systematic Test of the Effective Schools Model

This article presents cross-sectional data on the relation between school achievement and measures of school environment, particularly “effective schools” characteristics. The data are for 38 high schools, 32 middle schools, and 134 elementary schools, across 22 districts in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. The achievement measures include standardized test data in math and reading, as well as dropout rates. In addition to a wide range of school characteristics, key measures of school environment were collected through lengthy mailed surveys of 5,500 teachers in the districts. In addition to an effective schools index, we analyze the effects of parental involvement and variation in teacher control of key decisions in schools. The findings offer support for the notion that school environment has an effect on achievement. They also show that the complex of environmental variables that are significantly related to achievement are themselves highly intercorrelated and very much affected by the location of the school (city or suburbs) and the student population in the schools. These results lead us to question the direction of causality and thus the certainty of success of intervention programs along current effective schools lines.

Who Chooses? Voucher and Interdistrict Choice Programs in Milwaukee

Choice in American education remains one of the more important and certainly more controversial issues in education reform movements. This article analyzes two types of choice programs located in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Numerous research issues are involved in the debates over educational choice. Two of the most important sets of issues are who chooses and why, and what are the effects on educational outcomes? This article is concerned with the first set of questions. The theme of the article is that who chooses is a function of the type and design of the choice program itself. Although there are some similarities in the characteristics of students and families in the Milwaukee Parental Choice program (a private-school voucher program) and the Chapter 220 program (an interdistrict public-school choice program), the contrasts are sharp and consistent across key variables. That result may not be welcomed by those seeking simple and decisive conclusions concerning some general theory of educational choice. We, however, view it somewhat positively because the message is that policymakers have the ability to create different choice programs to address different problems with appropriate effects on diverse student populations.

Going Public: Who Leaves a Large, Longstanding, and Widely Available Urban Voucher Program?

This article contributes to research concerning the determinants of student mobility between public and private schools. The authors analyze a unique set of data collected as part of a new evaluation of Milwaukee’s citywide voucher program. The authors find several important patterns. Students who switch from the private to the public sector were performing lower than their peers on standardized tests in the prior year. African Americans were disproportionately more likely to leave the private sector, as were students in schools serving proportionally more voucher students. The authors argue that although these results indicate that a large voucher program may provide an educational home for some students, it may not provide a long-term solution to those who are among the most disadvantaged.

The Determinants of Interdistrict Open Enrollment Flows: Evidence From Two States

Interdistrict open enrollment is the most widely used form of school choice in the United States. Through the theoretical lens of a utility maximization framework, this article analyzes the determinants of interdistrict open enrollment flows in Minnesota and Colorado. The authors’ empirical analysis employs an original data set that details open enrollment flows between all pairwise combinations of school districts within 100 miles of each other in these two states. These flows are merged with demographic and geographic data from the Common Core of Data and U.S. Census Bureau. The findings indicate that open enrollment flows are driven mainly by student achievement and structural characteristics of districts; distance plays a large constraining role. The results also suggest that most transfers take place between relatively high-achieving districts. The authors discuss the policy implications of these findings.

Similar Students, Different Choices: Who Uses a School Voucher in an Otherwise Similar Population of Students?

We examine what factors predict why some parents enroll their children in voucher schools while other parents with similar types of children and from similar neighborhoods do not. Furthermore, we investigate how aware parents are of their educational options, where they get their information, and what school characteristics they deem the most important. To answer these questions, we analyze the school choice patterns in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Using survey data, we compare responses from a representative sample of voucher parents and a matched sample of public school parents. While public school parents have higher incomes than voucher parents do, voucher parents have more years of education on average. We find that parents in both sectors rely heavily on their social networks to gain information about school options. Finally, we conclude that religion plays an important role in explaining why some parents use vouchers while others do not.

High-Stakes Choice Achievement and Accountability in the Nation’s Oldest Urban Voucher Program

This article considers the impact of a high-stakes testing and reporting requirement on students using publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools. We describe how such a policy was implemented during the course of a previously authorized multi-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which provided us with data on voucher students before and after the reform, as well as on public school students who received no new policy treatment. Our results indicate substantial growth for voucher students in the first high-stakes testing year, particularly in mathematics, and for students with higher levels of earlier academic achievement. We discuss these results in the context of both the school choice and accountability literatures.

Going Charter? A Study of School District Competition in Wisconsin

The question that drives this article is why some school districts decide to open up charter schools and others do not. Several answers are plausible: (a) entrepreneurial initiative, (b) structural explanations, and (c) spatial competition. We use data for the state of Wisconsin derived from extensive case studies of 19 charter schools and quantitative data on Wisconsin school district from state files and the U.S. Department of Education common core databases. We find evidence to support all three explanations for why districts “go charter.” First, in almost every school and district we visited for case studies, at the heart of either the district or the charter school, and often both, there were entrepreneurial administrators, school board members, teachers, or parents. Our evidence was anecdotal but very consistent across 19 case studies. Second, there are two general sets of structural characteristics that were shown to be quantitatively correlated with becoming a charter district. The first set comprised resource characteristics (size, federal revenue, and available seats); the second set comprised indicators of unmet students needs (the percentage of students eligible for free lunch). Finally, we argue and believe we provide significant evidence that competition is also a motivation for going charter. We posit that open enrollment and charter schools are working together to enhance the flows of students from homeschooling, private schools, dropouts, and other public school districts into charter school districts. Thus using several different indicators and models, estimating both which districts become charter districts and the flow and net gain directly from open enrollment, there is no question that charter schools are increasing competition for students in Wisconsin.

Immigration Reform: Strategies for Legislative Action

This paper deals with the current prospects and potential problems with passage of immigration reform. Rather than recommend legislative and programmatic changes that many other commentators have posed, this paper discusses the possible legislative strategies for accomplishing changes in an immigration system that most believe is in dire need of reform. Specifically it asks if the various complex issues involved in immigration should be considered as separable and discrete issues, subject to serial and incremental legislation, or, as currently being conceived by the Obama administration, as a comprehensive package of reforms. We begin by describing and analyzing the core set of issues defining immigration policy. We then discuss various theories of issue preferences and how those theories have implications for the choice of relevant strategies for the immigration debate. Finally we present evidence based on recent congressional voting patterns and the positions taken by the most important interest groups.