Some data came out this week from the Department of Education, in the form of School Performance Scores for students who accepted vouchers through the program. Children who once attended subpar schools are eligible to receive state money to attend a nonpublic or higher-ranked
Some data came out this week from the Department of Education, in the form of School Performance Scores for students who accepted vouchers through the program. Children who once attended subpar schools are eligible to receive state money to attend a nonpublic or higher-ranked public school, if space is available. DOE for each school where adequate data could be collected computed a ranking of that voucher cohort, as if it were its own school, and released that data.
They showed a wide range of success for the cohorts treated as schools, but overall most were not terribly different from the underperforming environments that the students had left. Almost half were scored at the D or F level, equivalent by definition to the scores of their previous schools (students at C-ranked public schools also are eligible for the program, but only if space is available after the pool of students from the lower-ranked schools in an area is exhausted).
Unfortunately, this tells little about the program’s impact, for a few reasons. First, because cohorts at some schools were too small for reliable testing – qualifying schools have at least 40 students in testing grades or at least 10 students per grade – these had to be excluded. Second, testing, which is a large component to SPS calculations below high school, begins only in the third grade and many voucher students are below that. For this reason, not much more than half of the students in the program can provide data for these calculations.
Third, while for elementary schools the SPS basically is achievement made on tests, another small factor enters in to scoring in middle schools and is makes up a minority of the score for high schools. Thus, this enters into the measure components not directly tied to and/or quantifiable of academics that detracts from telling if the pr