(NPR) by Cory Turner.
It is the education debate of the Trump era. With the president and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos using policy and the bully pulpit to champion private school vouchers, supporters and critics have tangled over the question:
Do low-income, public school students perform better when they’re given a voucher to attend a private school?
For years, the answer from researchers has been a muddle, while a handful of recent studies have clearly shown voucher students backsliding academically. Today, much-anticipated reviews of not one but two of the nation’s largest voucher programs add some depth and a few twists to the voucher narrative.
First, Indiana. No one has studied the largest, single statewide program in the nation … until now. More than 34,000 students are enrolled in Indiana’s Choice Scholarship Program. That’s 3 percent of students statewide.
In a recent investigation of the program, NPR found some private schools turning away children with disabilities and LGBTQ students, but it was impossible to say, at the time, whether those students who are using vouchers are any better off academically.
Researchers Mark Berends of the University of Notre Dame and R. Joseph Waddington of the University of Kentucky have spent years studying this question, and they’ve given NPR an early look at their findings.
The backslide
In their unpublished research, which is now being peer-reviewed, Waddington and Berends studied the standardized test scores of low-income, public school students (grades 3-8) who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch and who used a voucher to switch to a private school.
