Choice and competition – SOS Australia

A Guide to Research on Vouchers

sosaustralia / November 30, 2022 / Choice and competition, Funding, Public education

School vouchers have devastating effects on student outcomes. Full stop. .

Large-scale independent studies in D.C.,Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio show that for kids who left public schools, harmful voucher impacts actually meet or exceed what the pandemic did to test scores. That’s also a similar impact in Louisiana to what Hurricane Katrina did to student achievement back in 2005.

Think about that next time you hear a politician or activist claim we need taxpayer support for private schools to offset what the pandemic did to student learning. Here, their cure would in test score terms be quite literally worse than the disease.

Voucher Advocate Recants – “Vouchers are dangerous”

Trevor Cobbold / August 8, 2022 / Choice and competition, Funding

In a welcome display of intellectual honesty, a leading US advocate of school vouchers has recanted. In a damning indictment, Professor Joshua Cowen now says that “vouchers are dangerous” and they “fail to deliver for the kids who are often most in need”. He says that “the evidence is just too stark to justify the use of public money to fund private tuition”.

In an opinion piece in the US education website, The Hechinger Report, Professor Cowan unequivocally stated that voucher programs have failed in the United States:

They promise an all-too-simple solution to tough problems like unequal access to high-quality schools, segregation and even school safety. In small doses, years ago, vouchers seemed like they might work, but as more states have created more and larger voucher programs, experts like me have learned enough to say that these programs on balance can severely hinder academic growth — especially for vulnerable kids.

Sweden: A Failure in Market-Based Education

sosaustralia / December 12, 2020 / Choice and competition

Sweden is often seen as part of a homogeneous Nordic sphere; small cold countries with midnight sun, fair-skinned population, small social democratic idylls with equal free healthcare, good schools and a high standard of living. The reality is never as simple as our prejudices and one of the things that now characterizes Sweden is that we in important areas of society have left the common Nordic tradition of a cohesive school.

Private School Vouchers Don’t Improve Student Achievement

sosaustralia / June 3, 2020 / Choice and competition

The US public school advocacy organisation Public Funds, Public Schools has published a review of recent studies of vouchers in the US. The studies show that private school vouchers have not improved student achievement and have multiple negative effects including exacerbating social segregation in schools. The findings on student achievement are reproduced below. The full review is available here.

School vouchers expand despite evidence of negative effects

sosaustralia / June 8, 2019June 8, 2019 / Choice and competition

For the past couple of decades, proponents of vouchers for private schools have been pushing the idea that vouchers work.

They assert there is a consensus among researchers that voucher programs lead to learning gains for students – in some cases bigger gains than with other reforms and approaches, such as class-size reduction.

They have highlighted studies that show the positive impact of vouchers on various populations. At the very least, they argue, vouchers do no harm.

As researchers who study school choice and education policy, we see a new consensus emerging — including in pro-voucher advocates’ own studies — that vouchers are having mostly no effects or negative effects on student learning. As a result, we see a shift in how voucher proponents are redefining what voucher success represents. They are using a new set of non-academic gains that were not the primary argument to promote vouchers.

School Choice Increases Social Segregation and Inequity in Education

Trevor Cobbold / May 27, 2019May 29, 2019 / Choice and competition, Equity in education

A new OECD report, Balancing School Choice and Equity, shows that school choice policies have increased social and academic segregation between schools which, in turn, reduced equity in education. Australia is a prime example of the impact of choice on social segregation. School choice has been at the centre of education policy for the last 20 or more years. Australia now has one of the most socially and academically segregated school systems in the OECD and has highly inequitable education outcomes.

Devastating Critique of US Education Policies

sosaustralia / December 13, 2018February 26, 2020 / Choice and competition

Diane Ravitch has made another devastating critique of market-based education policies in the United States, many of which have been copied by the Gillard Government. Some key excerpts follow. Continue reading “Devastating Critique of US Education Policies”

Study Shows That Vouchers to Attend Private Schools Reduce Student Achievement

Trevor Cobbold / January 25, 2018July 20, 2019 / Choice and competition

A new US study has found that vouchers to attend private schools leads to lower student achievement by up to a year or more of learning. It shows that funding disadvantaged students to attend private schools resulted in lower test scores in maths, reading, science and social studies. Continue reading “Study Shows That Vouchers to Attend Private Schools Reduce Student Achievement”

School Autonomy in England Fails to ‘Unleash Greatness’

Trevor Cobbold / November 14, 2016April 22, 2019 / Choice and competition

The UK Government promised to ‘unleash greatness’ in English schools with its radical school autonomy plan to convert all schools to independent academies. A new comprehensive review of the experience with academies shows the plan is failing. It concludes that academies are an imperfect way to address the challenges faced by struggling schools and their students and that school autonomy has clear limits as a school reform strategy.

Continue reading “School Autonomy in England Fails to ‘Unleash Greatness’”

OECD Says That Competition in Education Has Failed

Trevor Cobbold / September 2, 2016April 24, 2019 / Choice and competition

The OECD has issued a damning verdict on education policies that promote competition between schools. Its latest PISA in Focus brief
says bluntly that the PISA international test data shows that more competition has failed to improve student results and has increased social segregation between schools. Continue reading “OECD Says That Competition in Education Has Failed”