Vouchers

Publicly funded voucher policies are now established in jurisdictions throughout the United States, but the number of students receiving such vouchers remains very small. For the 2006–2007 school year, fewer than 57,000 vouchers were granted for all programs combined. This entry describes these policies, their effects, and their current legal status.

Each jurisdiction's voucher policy has its own unique characteristics, in terms of the targeted population and in terms of eligible private schools. In Florida, Georgia, and Utah, vouchers are available only for students receiving special education. In Arizona, voucher plans cover special education students as well as students in foster care. In Cleveland and Washington, D.C., voucher eligibility is limited to low-income students, and the same is true of Milwaukee's voucher program, the oldest and largest in the nation. In addition, a new statewide voucher program in Ohio targets students in schools under “academic watch” or designated as failing. Maine and Vermont have, for more than a century, allowed students in rural areas without public schools to use vouchers to attend nonre-ligious private schools. In addition, five states have “tuition tax credit vouchers” (see “Tuition Tax Credits” entry in this encyclopedia), which mirror conventional vouchers in most relevant aspects.

In 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Cleveland's voucher plan in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the program at issue was one of only five publicly funded voucher plans in the nation; the other plans operated in Florida, Milwaukee, Maine, and Vermont. Many observers expected that Zelman's lowering of the federal legal hurdle for vouchers would prompt the adoption of voucher policies in many more jurisdictions. In [Page 877]fact, only a limited expansion has thus far occurred. Voucher policies of one form or another have since become law in Colorado; Washington, D.C.; Arizona; Ohio; and Utah. As noted below, Colorado's law was thereafter found in violation of its state constitution, as was one of Florida's two voucher policies. Utah's 2007 voucher law was immediately withdrawn by voters, although an older plan for special education students remains.

Research on the effects of vouchers has explored several important policy issues. Regarding achievement, nonrobust findings of small and isolated gains have been reported for the privately funded voucher plan in New York City and the publicly funded voucher plan in Milwaukee. Overall, however, research has failed to associate these choice policies with increases in student achievement.

Regarding segregation, studies have tended to show that low-income students of color are well represented among voucher recipients, due to the fact that the largest existing voucher policies are means tested (i.e., recipient families must be lower income). However, parents of voucher students tend to have higher educational levels than other parents in their communities because choice programs select for parental involvement-a factor highly correlated with parental education.

Market principles suggest that voucher policies will generate responses by public schools that compete for the same students but those responses will not necessarily be focused on core educational concerns, such as curricular innovation. Instead, these responses may focus on marketing and promotion, and they may be targeted only at select, desired students. Overall, the evidence does not convincingly show substantial positive or negative public school effects of competition.

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