School Vouchers: A Vehicle to Induce Greater Competition Among Public Schools

This article argues that current research on school voucher programs misses a crucial point about the variability of vouchers’ effectiveness across school districts. Most research on school vouchers analyzes the effect of voucher programs on student achievement without engaging in a more fine-grained analysis to assess which districts see student success and which do not. This article seeks to correct course by synthesizing various strands of the leading research studies to conclude that vouchers have the strongest impact on the lowest- and highest-performing public-school students and in the most competitive school districts. Analyses of this sort—which avoid one-size-fits-all conclusions about the relationship between vouchers and educational outcomes—will prove increasingly useful in a political climate that seems ripe for educational reform, especially as the incoming presidential administration pursues an agenda centered on school choice