Combined with the recent revelations that charter schools are being used as a dumping ground for poor students, why, its almost enough to make one think that the entire "school reform" movement was conceived by charlatans.
We know what works smaller class sizes. But that means more teachers, which is hard to monetize for the wealthy as contracts for outside firms or endless layers of no-work admin jobs for local rich fail-sons. Teachers actually have to work, and you can tell when there doing a bad job.
Getting better outcomes has never been the point of voucher programs.
3: The intended outcomes are working out relatively well - damage teacher's unions, promote religion in schools, and ruin the reputation of public education altogether.
4: You forgot "profit." But they sure didn't.
3-5 Right, but it's always been an essential part of the con.
I consider it a win that vouchers are showing demonstrably worse outcomes.
But do they care?
Nope! But this is definitely an issue where uninformed people still think that vouchers were proposed in good faith, and this kind of evidence is ideal because it doesn't get into the motives of the people proposing vouchers. "Sure, one might think this was a good idea, but see, it led to worse outcomes. OH WELL." It could even make UMC liberal-ish parents think twice about using vouchers on their own snowflake.
Thought: isn't the installment of voucher programs largely thanks to the rapprochement since the 70's of Protestant and Catholic conservatives? Through of US history bigoted Protestants spent a lot of time and energy being petrified Catholic schools might get any help from the state, right?
9last -- I doubt this. It's not the voucher that's creating the bad outcome, but the crappy school. We sent my daughter to private school K-12, not because we hated the public schools or teachers unions but because it was German immersion. I'd totally have taken vouchers if the state had wanted to pay some of the tuition. (Which wasn't all that high, actually, because of subsidies from the German government . . .)
I'd say that a significant part of support for vouchers, especially among DC policy types, is opportunism rather than ideology.
Two words that do not belong in proximity to one another are "Louisiana" and "education."