Last Updated: October 30, 2007

Four years ago, the Brookings Institution published “School Choice: Doing It The Right Way Makes A Difference,” a report of the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education. Chaired by Paul Hill of the University of Washington, the commission report (linked above) states the following:

“The most rigorous school choice evaluations that used random assignment…found that academic gains from vouchers were largely limited to the African-American students…[O]ne analyst has questioned [these] claims…This dispute has moved into the professional statistics journals, where the latest analysis favors a positive conclusion about the effects of choice on student achievement.” (p. 20-21)

This carefully worded passage alludes to random assignment studies of educational voucher programs in several cities. Below are the names of and links to eight studies reviewed by the Hill Commission as well as two additional studies issued this year.

Random Assignment Studies of School Voucher Impacts

Barnard, John, Constantine E. Frangakis, Jennifer L. Hill, and Donald B. Rubin. 2003. “Principal Stratification Approach to Broken Randomized Experiments: A Case Study of School Choice Vouchers in New York City,” Journal of the American Statistical Association 98 (462):299–323.

Cowen, Joshua M. Forthcoming. “School Choice as a Latent Variable: Estimating the ‘Complier Average Causal Effect’ of Vouchers in Charlotte.” Policy Studies Journal 35 (4).

Greene, Jay P. 2001. “Vouchers in Charlotte,” Education Matters 1 (2):55-60.

Greene, Jay P., Paul E. Peterson, and Jiangtao Du. 1998. “School Choice in Milwaukee: A Randomized Experiment,” Learning from School Choice, edited by Paul E. Peterson and Bryan C. Hassel (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press).

Howell, William G., and Paul E. Peterson (with Patrick J. Wolf and David E. Campbell). 2002, revised 2006. The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press).

Rouse, Cecilia E. 1998. “Private School Vouchers and Student Achievement: An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 553-602.

Wolf, Patrick, Babette Gutmann, Michael Puma, Lou Rizzo, Nada Eissa, and Marsha Silverberg. 2007. Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Impacts After One Year. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.