http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/000915NSCHOOL-VOUCHERS-N.html
Friday, 15 September 2000Voucher study's conclusions exaggeratedBy Kate ZernikeTHE NEW YORK TIMES Two weeks ago, prominent researchers released a study showing significant gains by black students who had been given vouchers to help pay for private school. The finding lent support to backers of voucher programs at a time when they have become an election-year issue. But now a company that gathered data for the research in New York, one of three cities studied, says the gains, as measured by scores on standardized math and reading tests, were overstated by the lead researcher, a Harvard professor known within the academic community for his exuberant support of vouchers. In fact, the company says, in New York there was no significant test score difference between students who attended private school on vouchers and those who stayed in public school. Bothered by what it describes as the exaggeration of the report's claims, the company, Mathematica Policy Research of Princeton, N.J., has taken the unusual step of issuing a statement that cautions against leaping to any policy conclusions. Mathematica calls the original finding "premature." The researchers, led by Paul E. Peterson, director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University, acknowledge that the gains among black students who used vouchers were concentrated heavily in Washington, where the improvement was twice as great as in New York and one-third greater than in the third city studied, Dayton, Ohio. But in an interview, Peterson stood by his characterization of the overall result as significant. "An average is an average," he said. The effect of the study's results was powerful: In the week after it was released, one professor counted 35 newspaper editorials citing it as an argument for expanding voucher programs, as ballot initiatives in California and Michigan would do. In addition to the upbeat conclusions being based largely on success in only one of the three cities, data from the study raised questions about whether the poorest students would even use vouchers - a point not made when the report was released. |
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