Publicly Funded School Voucher Programs

Publicly Funded School Voucher Programs

Author: Nathan A. Benefield

Publisher: Universal-Publishers

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 1581121164

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This study provides a policy analysis of publicly funded school voucher programs. This research provides an analysis of voucher programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee and of political, legal, and programmatic constraints facing voucher programs. A synopsis of student test score analyses and parental surveys provides a basis for analyzing the effect of programs on participants. A survey of 30 individuals working with the Cleveland and Milwaukee public schools or voucher programs clarifies the effect of the programs on the overall educational environment. A review of financial data from the programs, pending legislation, national poll data, and court rulings provides an understanding of the policy constraints facing voucher programs. The research indicates that school vouchers have positively affected student participants' academic achievement and finds that public schools have adapted to the competitive impact of vouchers by initiating reforms aimed at improving schools. While the analysis indicates that legal constraints still loom over voucher policy, school vouchers have become politically and programmatically viable as a policy alternative. The study concludes that vouchers programs are a beneficial and, pending legal outcomes, practical policy alternative.


The School Voucher Illusion

The School Voucher Illusion

Author: Kevin Welner

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0807781703

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This authoritative book examines the long-standing campaign that resulted in today’s school voucher policies. Advocates of private school vouchers promulgated a vision of service to low-income families, students of color, and other marginalized student populations. Vouchers were sold as a way to advance civil rights. But as voucher policies grew in size and became an element of Republican orthodoxy, they evolved into subsidies for a broad swath of advantaged families, with minimal antidiscrimination protections. The approach also transmuted into forms like education savings account programs and vouchers funded through tax-credited donations. In this book, scholars and national experts untangle this complex story to show how law and policy have aligned to dramatically alter the likely future of American schooling. They offer recommendations for modifying current policies with the goal of capturing more of the originally stated vision of voucher programs—equitable access to quality schooling, protection of all students’ civil rights, and advancement of the wider societal goals of a democratic educational system. Book Features: Shows how a fast-growing policy is transforming education in the United States in ways that are very different from how that policy was sold to the public. Sets the stage with a discussion of the history and legal dimensions of voucher battles, as well as the politics of policy change. Examines the basic structure of contemporary private schooling, the Southern history of vouchers, and the key federal court decisions that have opened the door to an explosion of state legislation. Offers profiles of voucher policies in two states that have made the largest efforts to support vouchers, as well as the only nationally funded program in the nation’s capital. Edited by three scholars with extensive experience in the study of school choice, with chapters by national experts who have produced seminal work in the field.


Vouchers and Public School Performance

Vouchers and Public School Performance

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13:

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This case study uses data from a school district with a voucher plan that has been in place since 1990 to determine if increased competition resulted in improved student performance.


Voucher Wars

Voucher Wars

Author: Clint Bolick

Publisher: Cato Institute

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9781930865389

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Annotation The dramatic story of the 12-year legal battle to get the courts to open the schoolhouse doors and give families a choice.


The Voucher Promise

The Voucher Promise

Author: Eva Rosen

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-07-14

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 0691172560

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Park Heights -- Housing insecurity & survival strategies -- The promise of housing vouchers -- The challenges of using the voucher -- "A tenant for every house"--"Not in my front yard" -- Choosing to move, choosing to stay


An Evaluation of Findings from Cleveland's State-Funded Voucher Program

An Evaluation of Findings from Cleveland's State-Funded Voucher Program

Author: Willie J. Newton

Publisher: Universal-Publishers

Published: 2011-03

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 1599423898

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This study examines the results of multiple evaluations of the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Grant Program (CTSP), a state-funded voucher program, by exploring extant evaluations and literature. Attention will be given to the following research question: Does participation in the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Grant Program have the hypothesized positive effect on traditional public school students' academic achievement? Cleveland's voucher program provides an ideal contextualized setting for ascertaining the extent to which school choice programs afford poor families the same educational options available to affluent families. This study concludes that overall there are no statistically significant gains in voucher students' academic achievement. In fact, it appears that some voucher students performed slightly worse in math. The program does, however, afford low-income students the opportunity to attend private secular or religious schools in accordance with the program's initial design and intent.


NeoVouchers

NeoVouchers

Author: Kevin Grant Welner

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0742540790

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While school vouchers have captured the headlines, a different policy has captured the students. Tuition tax credit laws are now entrenched in Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Iowa, and Georgia, and they affect far more students. Yet few people understand the nature of these policies or the political and legal issues surrounding them. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the structure, legality, and policy implications of tuition tax credits, which have garnered only scant attention even while expanding to cover more students than the voucher policies they're designed to emulate. At a time when tax credit policies are becoming a major form of American school choice, this book offers insights into both the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. Book jacket.


The Market Approach to Education

The Market Approach to Education

Author: John F. Witte

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2001-07-02

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1400823315

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Milwaukee, one of the nation's most segregated metropolitan areas, implemented in 1990 a school choice program aimed at improving the education of inner-city children by enabling them to attend a selection of private schools. The results of this experiment, however, have been overshadowed by the explosion of emotional debate it provoked nationwide. In this book, John Witte provides a broad yet detailed framework for understanding the Milwaukee experiment and its implications for the market approach to American education. In a society supposedly devoted to equality of opportunity, the concept of school choice or voucher programs raises deep issues about liberty versus equality, government versus market, and about our commitment to free and universal education. Witte brings a balanced perspective to the picture by demonstrating why it is wrongheaded to be pro- or anti-school choice in the abstract. He explains why the voucher program seems to be working in the specific case of Milwaukee, but warns that such programs would not necessarily promote equal education--and most likely harm the poor--if applied universally, across the socioeconomic spectrum. The book begins with a theoretical discussion of the provision of education in America. It goes on to situate the issue of school choice historically and politically, to describe the program and private schools in Milwaukee, and to provide statistical analyses of the outcomes for children and their parents in the experiment. Witte concludes with some persuasive arguments about the importance of specifying the structural details of any choice program and with a call supporting vouchers for poor inner-city children, but not a universal program for all private schools. Voucher programs continue to be the most controversial approach to educational reform. The Market Approach to Education provides a thorough review of where the choice debate stands through 1998. It not only includes the "Milwaukee story" but also provides an analysis of the role, history, and politics of court decisions in this most important First Amendment area.