School vouchers and student achievement: recent evidence, remaining questions

Lisa Barrow and Cecilia Elena Rouse

No WP-08-08, Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Abstract: In this article, we review the empirical evidence on the impact of education vouchers on student achievement, and briefly discuss the evidence from other forms of school choice. The best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered education vouchers, most of which are not statistically different from zero. Further, what little evidence exists regarding the potential for public schools to respond to increased competitive pressure generated by vouchers suggests that one should remain wary that large improvements would result from a more comprehensive voucher system. The evidence from other forms of school choice is also consistent with this conclusion. Many questions remain unanswered, however, including whether vouchers have longer-run impacts on outcomes such as graduation rates, college enrollment, or even future wages, and whether vouchers might nevertheless provide a cost-neutral alternative to our current system of public education provision at the elementary and secondary school level.

Keywords: Educational; vouchers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publicati ... s/2008/wp2008_08.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: School Vouchers and Student Achievement: Recent Evidence, Remaining Questions (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-08-08

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lauren Wiese ().