Released: 6/16/2008
The latest results from the official evaluation of the Washington D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program are only the latest entry in a long line of top-quality empirical research on vouchers. Ten studies have examined the impact of vouchers using random assignment, which is the best possible scientific method. This body of evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of vouchers. No other education policy is as well supported by high-quality scientific evidence as school choice.
Like all the previous top-quality research, the new results from the D.C. program show that students in the voucher group had better academic outcomes than students in the control group (who applied for vouchers but lost a random lottery and didn’t receive them). However, in this study, as in one other study, the positive results did not achieve statistical significance. This only means that we cannot be highly confident the positive results for vouchers are not a statistical fluke.
