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Study Found Vouchers Don't Help Children Perform Better in Cleveland
Children using publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools aren't performing any better than children in Cleveland Public Schools, according to a new, state-funded report.
The third installment in the ongoing study continues to raise questions about the value of the Cleveland voucher program, which was pitched in 1995 as a way for poor students to escape what some called ``the failing Cleveland Public Schools.''
In his latest report, Indiana University researcher Kim Metcalf says there is no statistical difference between the academic performance of children using vouchers to attend private schools and those in the 77,000-student district.
Previous reports showed similar results.
Taxpayers have spent more than $40 million since the fall of 1996 to pay as much as 85 percent of the tuition for children attending private -- almost exclusively Roman Catholic -- schools.
This year, about 5,200 children are receiving vouchers.
Orest Holubec, spokesman for Gov. Bob Taft, said the governor had not seen the report and could not comment.
Robert Tayek, spokesman for the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, said most offices were closed Tuesday afternoon for Holy Week services and no one was available to comment.
Ohio's experiment with using tax dollars to pay for education in religious schools went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last summer, the court ruled the program was constitutional. It said vouchers should be considered among the many school choices available to children from poor families and not as government entanglement with religion.
Metcalf's study, however, questioned some of the information state officials provided to the court.
He said the black population in Cleveland Public Schools is underrepresented in voucher recipients; therefore, white and Hispanic children are overrepresented.
Also, children in the free-lunch program -- which indicates they come from low-income homes -- also are underrepresented in the voucher program.
Metcalf also said that students who leave the voucher program tend to be among the lowest-performing students. The question to be answered, possibly by later studies, is whether the students left by choice or were encouraged to leave.
The Akron Beacon Journal, in its own analysis of voucher enrollment a year ago, found that while proponents of the program in the first year said the average family income was about $9,000, more recent enrollment data showed that only one in three children came from a home in poverty.
About one in four children came from families earning more than twice the level of poverty. Some students who already were enrolled and paying tuition were being tapped to receive vouchers a few months into the school year.
In addition, the newspaper's study showed that the number of children in Cleveland Public Schools increased since 1996 while enrollment in private schools declined. That meant private schools were receiving about $6 million in voucher payments to educate fewer children than when the program began.
That Metcalf's study shows there is no measurable difference in academic performance ``tends to negate the selling point of the voucher program,'' said William Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy in School Funding.
His group has won four Ohio Supreme Court rulings that say public education is inadequately funded in the state.
He said black students' and poor students' underrepresentation in the voucher program continues to raise questions about proponents' motives.
``All along, some of us suspected that there were other motives, such as a profit motive for some,'' Phillis said. The other motive was to ``have the state pay for religious indoctrination.''
— Doug Oplinger and Dennis J. Willard
Study questions voucher value
Akron Beacon Journal
April 16, 2003
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/5644288.htm
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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