The P Stands for Public

This week's Gadfly has some really interesting nuggets: Fordham Foundation President Checker Finn discusses international benchmarking and the organization's move to the future, and apparently Bill Bennett is launching an entire history curriculum. The latter seems particularly ripe for comment, but I really have beef with only one word in the entire issue: safe.

As in, "a safer and sounder private education," in reference to the DC voucher program. The voucher program's evaluation found no such thing. Parents thought the schools were safer, but the students reported no differences. What I said last summer bears repeating:

...to hold up parental support as evidence of success here is pretty superficial, especially when we consider who made up the control group in the study. The authorizing legislation mandated the “strongest possible research design for determining the effectiveness of the program,” so the Institute of Education Sciences adopted a lottery system for the program, so that the results of the voucher recipients could be compared to the results of non-recipients, while controlling for motivation and other factors. The control group consisted of students who applied but were rejected for the vouchers. This makes for a valid comparison for student achievement, but not necessarily for parental happiness. All of the parents wanted their child educated outside of the DC public schools; it only makes sense that the ones who achieved this goal were happier than the ones who didn’t, especially after only one year.

Moreover, who is the best judge of violence and overall school quality—parents, or the students themselves? On violence, students reported no statistically significant difference between public and private schools. In other words, the people who actually witness and experience violence, the students themselves, reported no increases in seeing weapons; being offered drugs; or being victims of theft, physical assault, or bullying.