Research from the Urban Institute on Ohio’s school choice program indicated that giving children the option to attend private schools through vouchers significantly improves academic outcomes, including college enrollment and graduation.
On Tuesday, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank released a study on Ohio’s Educational Choice Scholarship Program. Researchers compared the long-term academic performance of 6,000 Ohio students who used the voucher program to attend private schools with over 500,000 public school students.
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The study found EdChoice students were 8% more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than their public school peers.
The children who benefited most from the private school scholarships, researchers concluded, were black students, boys, those raised in poor households, and children who had been labeled as below average academic performers in public schools.
Black students were 138% more likely to obtain a college degree than their public school peers, male students were 86% more likely, and students who spent the most time in poverty during childhood were 175% more likely.
Urban Institute researchers also found that the longer the student participated in the school voucher program, the larger the impact, indicating a possible dosage effect. For example, students who remained in the EdChoice program for at least four years were 44% more likely to enroll in college than their public school peers.
The latest analysis comes as alternatives to public schools have seen a surge in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Twenty states voted to expand school choice options in 2023. So far this year, three states — Idaho, Wyoming, and Tennessee — have enacted laws boosting school choice policies.
Such policies have met harsh pushback from critics who argue that they take away desperately needed attention and funding from public school students. “Public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate,” the Democratic Party’s 2024 election platform read.
School choice advocacy groups such as the American Federation for Children have dismissed those concerns and celebrated the Urban Institute’s study as proof that academic freedom can uplift all students. AFC also called on Congress to cement school choice policies into law through Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Tim Scott’s (R-SC) Educational Choice for Children Act.
“Researchers continue to confirm what parents already know: school choice works,” AFC CEO Tommy Schultz said in a statement. “This is another huge win for the data behind school choice coupled with the surging demand for educational options across our nation and another indication that we are embarking on the golden age in American education fueled by school choice.”
AFC’s Legislative Policy Director, Patrick Graff, added: “It is difficult to overstate the significance of this study from one of the country’s earliest, large-scale voucher programs. The large positive effects of the EdChoice program on college going and graduation affirm that access to school choice was literally life-changing for some of the lowest-income students in Ohio. Beyond these participant effects, the authors corroborate another consistent finding in the school choice literature — that the competition this program induced also improved college outcomes for public school students.”
School choice advocates are eying a national law implementing school choice through Cassidy and Scott’s ECCA.
The ECCA “would offer an opportunity for all 50 states in the United States to benefit from this school choice program,” ACE Scholarships CEO Norton Rainey previously told the Washington Examiner. “We love tax credits. Our donors love it as well too because they can really make a difference by serving the lowest-income kids. This particular bill at a federal level does exactly that. It will serve the lowest-income families.”