Comments on 'Another Look at the New York City Voucher Experiment.'

This brief paper is a response to a reanalysis (Krueger & Zhu, 2003) of a report (Mayer, Peterson, Myers, Tuttle, & Howell, 2002). The response is offered by two of the authors (Myers & Mayer) of the original report. The original report presented an evaluation of the impact of vouchers on students' reading and mathematics achievement and on parents' satisfaction with their schools. The evaluation looked at a program in New York City begun in 1997 in which 1,300 scholarships (vouchers) worth up to $1,400 each were granted, through a lottery, to public-school students in grades K-4 to attend private schools. This paper comments on two issues raised in the reanalysis: (1) the sensitivity of the findings to different definitions of African American; and (2) the use of the kindergarten cohort and other students with missing baseline test data when estimating the impact of a voucher offer on students' achievement. This paper includes three tables that show the reading, mathematics, and composition test scores from the original report; lengthy footnotes; and nine references. (WFA)