ed next voucher study

7/28/2019 Ed Next Voucher Study

1/7


2/7

educationnext.org S U M M E R 2 0 1 3 / EDUCATION NEXT 59

research

PHOTOGRAPHY / ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF CHILDRENS SCHOLARSHIP FUND, NEW YORK CITYALYESHA TAVERAS (LEFT) GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL IN 2012 AND IS CURRENTLY ENROLLED AT SETON HALL UNIVERSITY.

In 1996, Cardinal John J. OConnor, archbishop of New York, proposedto Rudy Crew, chancellor of the New York City public school system, that the citys most troubledpublic-school students be sent to Catholic schools, where he would see that they were given aneducation. New York Citys mayor at that time, Rudolph Giuliani, a voucher supporter, attemptedto secure public funds that would allow Catholic schools to fulfill the cardinals offer. But voucheropponents condemned the idea on the grounds that it violated the no establishment of religionclause of the First Amendment. It was only several years later, in 2002, that the U.S. Supreme Court

found vouchers constitutional.As the controversy raged in the late 1990s, a group of philanthropists created the New York

School Choice Scholarships Foundation (SCSF), which offered three-year vouchers worth up to

$1,400 annually to as many as 1,000 low-income families with children who were either entering 1stgrade or were public school students about to enter grades two through five. Due to excess demand,SCSF established a lottery for interested families. If a family met the eligibility criteria and won theSCSF lottery, all of that familys children entering grades one through five would receive a voucher.Recipients could attend any one of the hundreds of participating private schools, religious or secu-

lar, within New York City.According to the Archdiocese of New York, average tuition in the citys Catholic schools, thecitys largest private provider, was $1,728, which was 72 percent of the total per-pupil cost of $2,400to educate a child at these schools. The scholarship would thus cover only a portion of the costs

by MATTHEW M. CHINGOS and PAUL E. PETERSON

The Impact ofSchool Vouchers onCollege Enrollment

African Americans benefit the most


3/7


4/7

according to the students grade when enrolling in thestudy) because the most recent enrollment data availableare for fall 2011 and the youngest cohort was expected tograduate high school in 2009. We also report the effects

of the voucher offer on full-time enrollment; enrollmentin four-year colleges; enrollment in private colleges; andenrollment in selective colleges.

We identify students as nothaving enrolled in college ifthey are not matched to anyNSC records. Some measure-ment error of college enroll-ment is possible. For example,a student who enrolled in col-lege but whose birth date wasincorrect in our records would

be counted as a nonenrollee.This type of measurement erroris unlikely to bias our estimatesbecause there is no reason tobelieve it is related to whether astudent won the school-choicelottery. Our results could bebiased, however, if being offereda voucher affected enrollment inthe small share of colleges thatdo not participate in the NSC.

We estimate the effects oncollege enrollment of simply

being offered a voucher, evenif it is not used to enroll in aprivate school, as well as theeffects of actual voucher use.The effect of the voucher offeris referred to as an intent-to-treat (ITT) estimate, as offer-ing a voucher to a family is anattempt by SCSF to induce the family to make use of a privateschool. The ITT effect includes both the effect of voucheruse for those who used it and any effects on those who wereoffered the voucher but declined. The impact of actually

using the voucher is referred to as a treatment-on-treated(TOT) estimate, as it identifies the effects on those actu-ally treated, that is, those who used the voucher to attend aprivate school. The TOT analysis assumes that winning thelottery had no impact on college enrollment among studentswho never used a voucher.

Of the 2,637 students included in our analysis, 1,358students won the lottery and were therefore assigned tothe treatment group. The remaining 1,279 students wereassigned to the control group. All the students who appliedfor a voucher were socioeconomically disadvantaged, as

only low-income families were eligible to participate. Nearlyhalf of the students came from families in which neitherparent had attended college. The vast majority of studentswere African American or Hispanic; the performance of

the average student when tested before names were enteredinto the lottery was between the 17th and 25th percentile ofstudents nationwide.

Although African American and Hispanic students hadfairly similar scores on the baseline achievement test, studentsin these groups differed in a number of respects. While 42percent of all students in the control group enrolled in college

within three years of expected high-school graduation, only36 percent of African American students in the control groupdid so, compared to 45 percent of Hispanic students. AfricanAmerican students in the treatment and control groups weremore likely than Hispanic students to be male and more likelyto have a parent with a college education. They were also morelikely to come from one-child families and from families withfour or more children.

As would be expected in a randomized experiment, stu-dents in the treatment and control groupsboth overalland across African Americans and Hispanicshad similar

educationnext.org S U M M E R 2 0 1 3 / EDUCATION NEXT 61

research

VOUCHERS AND COLLEGE CHINGOS & PETERSON

Chelsea Gil and Geanylyn Romero both graduated from high school in 2012 and are currently

enrolled at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.


5/7


6/7


7/7

ed next voucher study

Documents