Test-Score Effects of School Vouchers in Dayton, Ohio, New York City, and Washington, D.C.: Evidence from Randomized Field Trials.

In the late 1990s, three privately funded school voucher programs for students from low-income families were established in the Dayton, Ohio metropolitan area, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Additional programs were created in Dayton and Washington, D.C. and in 1999, the Children's Scholarship Fund, a nationwide school choice scholarship program, provided additional support to these programs. Evaluations of the programs show that in the three cities taken together, the average, overall test performance of African American students who switched from public to private schools was, after 1 year, 3.3 National Percentile Ranking (NPR) points higher than the performance of the control group remaining in the public schools, and after 2 years, the difference was 6.3 NPR points. No statistically significant effects, either positive or negative, were observed for students from other ethnic groups who switched to private schools through these programs. Results for African Americans did not vary significantly by subject matter, but results did vary somewhat by city, with the greatest gains in Washington, D.C. In that city, older students switching to private schools had trouble adapting to their school in the first year, but recovered lost ground and gained substantially by the end of the second year. Evaluation teams plan to explore why the voucher program had positive effects on African American students and no detectable effects on others. (Contains 11 tables.) (SLD)