VOUCHERS TO REDUCE DROPOUT RATES IN GEORGIA?

Review concludes that the conclusions reached by Friedman Foundation series on voucher program benefits "are not trustworthy."

A new report issued last week by the Friedman Foundation and the Georgia Public Policy Foundation is part of a series of reports asserting that dropout rates could be reduced with the implementation of private-school voucher programs, but all of these reports "cherry-pick" research authority and ignore an abundance of relevant research on high school graduation, according to a review of the first five of these reports. The review, by Professor Sherman Dorn of the University of South Florida, was published in January of 2008, and covered reports released from early 2006 through late 2007.

Find Sherman Dorn's review here.


The five reports, each specific to a given state -- Missouri, Indiana, Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina -- are written in a parallel structure, with only "the details of the arguments chang[ing] in a formulaic manner for each state in question," according to Professor Dorn, who reviewed the reports for the Think Tank Review Project. The Georgia report follows the same formula, making the same arguments, and citing the same sources. All these reports were written by researcher Brian Gottlob.

Among their more serious flaws, Dorn finds that all the reports he reviewed:

• inadequately use existing research on dropping out and school competition;

• present a superficial calculation of the costs of dropping out;

• improperly rely on a single, imperfect 1998 article as the entire basis for their calculations on the purported impact of voucher programs on improving graduation rates; and

• ignore possible alternative approaches for raising graduation rates, instead focusing exclusively on private school voucher programs. Dorn writes: "Without a comparative analysis of alternative proposals to increase high school graduation, the reports are of little practical use to policymakers who have no means by which to gauge the value of vouchers versus other alternatives."

On their argument for vouchers as a remedy to reduce dropout rates, Dorn found that the reports "cherry-pick" a 1998 article to support the association while ignoring other, contradictory research. Moreover, these reports lack appropriate transparency in their calculations that apply that earlier article's formula to each state's dropout data. Absent the necessary statistical details, "the reports' conclusions about the benefits of school voucher programs are not trustworthy," Dorn says. The Georgia report cherry picks the same 1998 article and has precisely these same defects.

At the same time, Dorn adds, "the reports make no mention of the extensive literature exploring graduation, dropping out, and the factors that shape educational attainment." As a result, "each report obscures other program options that policy-makers could consider." These other options include preschool programs and intervention in elementary and high school grades. The Georgia report repeats these mistakes.

In addition, the reports offer only an oversimplified analysis of the costs of dropping out, both to individuals and to society. In doing so, Dorn explains, they ignore the "extensive, published debate among economists" who have found that understanding the impact of dropping out is much more complex. Dropping out is a real problem, he notes, and it deserves serious rather than superficial analysis.

Dorn notes that while dropout rates should indeed be cause for concern, the Friedman Foundation reports are not credible. He concludes by advising state policy makers who are interested in increasing graduation to bypass these reports and instead seek out "the available, well-researched scholarship on the topic," much of which he identifies in the review.