Freakonomics and School Choice

Freakonomics, the 2005 best-selling book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times writer Stephen Dubner, made economics both readable and entertaining.  And now the authors of the blog behind the bestseller have turned to school choice.  In a blog post published earlier this week, the Freakonomics bloggers have taken a good look at the effect of school choice on student motivation and academic outcomes.

Citing a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the freakonomists unsurprisingly communicated the data in an easily-digestible manner for everyone to understand.  The result:

[W]e use unique daily data on individual-level student absences and suspensions to show that lottery winners have significantly lower truancies after they learn about lottery outcomes but before they enroll in their new schools. The effects are largest for male students entering high school, whose truancy rates decline by 21% in the months after winning the lottery.

The freakonomists go on:

We interpret this as students exerting more effort towards academics at their current school due to an increase in intrinsic motivation from knowing that they will be able to attend a school of their choice in the subsequent school year.

Furthermore, test scores seem to bolster the argument:

We then examine the impact attending a chosen school has on student test score outcomes. We find substantial test score gains from attending a charter school and some evidence that choosing and attending a high value-added magnet school improves test scores as well. Our results contribute to current evidence that school choice programs can effectively raise test scores of participants. Our findings suggest that this may occur both through an immediate effect on student behavior and through the benefit of attending a higher-performing school.

The folks at Freakonomics give us yet another reason to support all educational options.

- American Federation for Children | Alliance for School Choice, MSG

Setting the Record Straight

The conversation about school choice has been making the rounds in national media lately, following Mitt Romney's inclusion of a voucher proposal in his recently-unveiled education plan, large expansions in Louisiana and Arizona, and the creation of new programs in places like Virginia and the aforementioned Bayou State.

It has all resulted in a crush of media attention, all of which has not been accurate, fair, or unbiased.

Instead of focusing on the evidence showing the benefits of school choice, many editorial boards and reporters have taken to conveying many of the common myths of school choice. But our resident myth-buster, senior advisor Kevin P. Chavous, has made short work of their claims in exposing the truth about choice.

In fact, here’s what Kevin wrote in yesterday’s Boston Globe, in response to a Globe editorial earlier this month:

The Globe’s June 2 editorial “ Romney’s education plan offers serious, debate-worthy proposals” strongly mischaracterized current voucher programs in Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., as yielding “unimpressive results.” The evidence of success of these programs can be clearly seen in the graduation rates of participating students.  

The D.C. voucher program is especially impressive on that indicator. The US Department of Education evaluation of the program found that students who used the vouchers graduated at a rate of 91 percent, more than 30 points higher than the graduation rates of D.C. public school students. An evaluation of the Milwaukee program also found higher graduation rates, and that students are more likely to enroll and persist in a four-year college than their public school peers. 

Furthermore, the D.C. voucher program boosted student reading scores, and students in the Milwaukee program showed improvement in both reading and science. 

For thousands of low-income families across the nation, school choice is a lifeline that rescues children from failing schools and struggling districts. As the bipartisan coalition supporting these initiatives expands, it’s important that politicians, parents, and citizens have a clear picture of the benefits of choice for families in need.

But that's not all. Kevin has also published responses to unfair stories in the New York Times and in a local Louisiana publication in response to a recent Reuters piece about the expansions in Louisiana. He's also worked feverishly to respond to a host of other stories that have appeared in recent weeks, and we'll be sure to share those with you when they're published, too.

A Letter to the Editor: Our Response to (and in) the New York Times

We told you last week about the poorly-reported front page story in the New York Times about scholarship tax credit programs, and many organizations throughout the movement have responded over the last week and a half to make clear that on the whole, scholarship tax credit programs are a lifeline to children from low-income families in desperate need of a better education.

You've heard our senior adviser, Kevin P. Chavous, talk frequently about that reality. And while he spoke to Stephanie Saul, the Times reporter who authored the piece in question, Chavous' quotes didn't make it into the final story.

We've spent the past week and a half demanding that the Times let us tell our side of the story, and finally, a letter to the editor Kevin wrote the day the story dropped has made it into the paper.

Click here to read Kevin's response, or view it after the jump.

Facts Fall to the Wayside in Today's New York Times

After reading Stephanie Saul’s attack on scholarship tax credit programs in today’s New York Times, it would be easy to see how a person could come away being weary of the programs. But that's before one considers something that's conspicuously missing from Saul's story: the facts.

Saul highlights the Georgia Scholarship Tax Credit Program—making the Georgia program sound like the pith of the ten scholarship tax credit programs across the nation.  The program serves approximately 8,131 students (which Saul fails to report)—or only 6.3 percent of the 128,792 students who participate in private scholarship tax credit programs.  Thus, the Georgia program only represents a small minority of scholarship tax credit programs nationwide.

She also fails to mention the programs in Indiana, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island, instead only making reference to Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Some of those other states might have been helpful in showing some context.

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, for example, serves nearly 40,000 students, yet the program is hardly mentioned in the story.  In fact, Saul does not mention the flagship program until the 16th paragraph, where she writes:

Some states have moved to tighten restrictions after receiving complaints.  In Florida, where the scholarships are strictly controlled to make sure they go to poor families, only corporations are eligible for the tax credits, eliminating the chance of parents donating for their own benefit.  Also, all scholarships are handled by one nonprofit organization, and its fees are limited to 3 percent of donations.  Florida also permits the scholarships to move with the students if they elect to change schools.

This “positive” aspect of the Florida program is shrouded in negative light.  A more balanced way of talking about the program:

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, created in 2001, serves nearly 40,000 students in the 2011-12 school year.  To be eligible for the program, students must qualify for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program—which in 2011 would require a family income of not more than $41,348 for a family of four.  The program has also been the subject of numerous students from both independent evaluators and the state.  

Governor Chris Christie, Mayor Cory Booker Put New Jersey Children Ahead of Partisan Politics

Newark Mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in 2010.

It's usually tough to find common ground in today's often bitterly partisan political landscape.  But two of New Jersey's most prominent chief executives are doing their best to change that. 

Instead of focusing on issues on which they don't agree, Republican Governor Chris Christie and Democratic Mayor Cory Booker -- both of whom will be giving keynote addresses at next month's AFC National Policy Summit -- may not agree on much, they do agree on providing children from low-income families the opportunity to access a quality education.  And that is something to celebrate!

While they have among the brightest futures in their respective parties, they're concerned less with running for the next office and more with working to reform New Jersey's education system for the betterment of the state's kids.

Christie has championed the Opportunity Scholarship Act (OSA), which would create a corporate scholarship tax credit program for children in the state's lowest-performing school districts, since he took office in January 2010.  He's made the OSA a top priority entering the legislative session, and it's expected to be considered by the legislature later this spring.  Booker, who became Newark's mayor in 2007, last year testified passionately in favor of the OSA and has been an outspoken supporter of Christie's education reform agenda.

'The Great Equalizer' Doesn't Add Up

"Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects."

That's lead paragraph in a front-page story that ran in The New York Times last week, on February 9. It tells of an often cast aside, but still terrifying fact: children from low-income families are not simply performing worse in school than their more affluent counterparts, but the achievement gap between students from impoverished families and affluent families is actually growing larger.

And one in five children in the United States—that’s 15.8 million young people in total—is living in poverty, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.

The reality is that the status quo is not working to shorten this gap.  Low-income families need educational options to choose an education that will best meet their children’s educational needs.

Education cannot be “the great equalizer” if it is not helping the children who need help most.  And when a school is failing them, low-income families often do not have the option to move to a better neighborhood or pay for private school tuition. 

But school choice programs are designed for children from low-income families, providing much needed options for thousands of children across the nation. 

In fact, 14 programs in 10 states plus the District of Columbia are means-tested or means-preferenced, publicly funded private school choice programs. Family income requirements are often a part of the enrollment process in school choice programs, ensuring that students whose families cannot afford choice independently are given this vital option. 

Based on the federal free and reduced-price lunch program or the federal poverty guidelines, these programs collectively serve 147,750 families across the nation.

Sadly, thousands more families don't have a choice in their education. What at all is equal about that?

- American Federation for Children | Alliance for School Choice, MSG

On The Pages of the Grey Lady, a Flawed Take on School Choice

After a summer of high-profile stories on school choice in the editorial pages of national newspapers, the issue is making mainstream waves again after an article in Sunday's New York Times by Natalie Hopkinson that proclaimed the failure of educational options, specifically in Washington, D.C. While the piece focuses solely on charter schools, the faulty argument could easily be applied to broader forms of choice, too -- that is hurts the middle class and helps perpetuate segregation among low-income schools in the nation's capital.

The facts, however, could not be further from that assertion.

It is not school choice that's to be blamed for low performance and a growing achievement gap; after all, school choice -- be it charters, or the city's high-performing D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program -- didn't exist long into the District's significant declines in achievement. School choice is to blame, however, for helping close that gap. Choice is too a culprit in helping improve the performance of traditional public schools, and we should stick it to school choice when we consider that students enrolled in the Opportunity Scholarship Program are more than 30 percentage points more likely to graduate than students in the traditional public school system. That's not to mention the fact that more than half of all D.C. public school students are now enrolled in a charter school.

If these options were so bad, why would families continue utilizing them, and seeing their performance improving?