Sorting through the Conflicting Voucher Results To help you avoid getting lost in the technical summary of voucher research on Milwaukee, the list below summarizes this report s distillation of what the research tells us. Two of three research teams think no positive outcomes result in reading. Two of three teams think that positive outcomes result in math. The evaluations all deal with small samples.
Many students drop out of the experiment, possibly on a non-random basis.
These data deficiencies should be kept in mind when interpreting the results. The parents of voucher applicants have more education and higher expectations than parents of most Milwaukee Public School students. Wherever they attend school, the children of such parents may improve over time compared to other students. Lacking the necessary data, the evaluations cannot look at the educational process inside the Choice schools. They cannot explain what lies behind any differences in performance between Choice and MPS schools or among the Choice schools.