More school choice in Texas isn’t just something that parents in this state want, it could have direct academic benefits as well.
A recent study from the University of Arkansas, described here in an article from the McIver Institute, shows clear academic advantage for students who participated in the Milwaukee voucher program against students in the same area who did not:
“In simple terms, students in the MPCP outperformed their counterparts by a significant margin when it came to reading. In eighth grade, a voucher student was 17 percent more likely to outgain a regular public school student when it came to reading and literacy.
Growth was also observed in mathematics for these students over the same period. Amongst seventh graders, MPCP students were 11 percent more likely to outscore their MPS peers.”
Achievement isn’t the only area in which students saw improvement. Participants in the voucher program were also more likely to graduate from high school, and more likely to attend a four year college than their counterparts in Milwaukee public schools.
The positives of school choice are becoming more apparent all the time. San Antonio’s Edgewood ISD voucher program saw academic gains among its students as well, and even experienced an increase in property value during the years of the voucher program’s operation. Still, in Texas, we have no such choice laws in place. In 2013, the Texas Legislature needs to look at the growing body of evidence that school choice benefits not just students, but the community as a whole, and give our state the kind of choice laws – voucher programs, education tax credits, and more flexibility in the state’s charter school system – that will make our public education system stronger.
-James Golsan