School Choice Myths by Corey A. DeAngelis & Neal P. McCluskey

Author:Corey A. DeAngelis & Neal P. McCluskey [DeAngelis, Corey A. & McCluskey, Neal P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cato Institute
Published: 2020-10-07T06:00:00+00:00

Case Studies: Florida and Louisiana

To investigate the effectiveness of the equalitarian policies, it is useful to consider the experiences of two states with school choice programs for low-income students that have very different regulatory regimes: Louisiana and Florida.

Louisiana’s voucher program has all of the equalitarians’ recommended regulations: an open-admissions requirement, price controls, accreditation, and a mandate to administer the state test with consequences tied to performance. By contrast, Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program eschews all these regulations, though it does require schools to administer their choice of a number of nationally norm-referenced tests and publicize the results. Holding all else equal, if equalitarians are correct, low-income students in Louisiana should have greater access to higher-quality private schools than low-income students in Florida.

Of course, not all else is equal. States differ significantly in their demographics and countless other observable and unobservable factors. Without use of randomized controlled trials, it is difficult to demonstrate conclusively that any given state’s policies outperform another state’s. But it is unfeasible, legally and constitutionally, to randomly assign one policy to some states and another policy to others.

Still, if a state’s school choice program were to achieve widespread access for low-income families to higher-quality schools than their assigned district schools without equalitarian regulations, it would demonstrate that those regulations are not necessary to achieve equalitarian ends. Likewise, if a school choice program with equalitarian regulations provided only limited access to a market in education, and high-quality research found persistently poor results relative to the district school system, then it would demonstrate that those regulations are not sufficient to achieve equalitarian ends. That is, in fact, what the respective experiences of Florida and Louisiana show.

The Florida Tax-Credit Scholarship Program

In 2001, Florida became the third state to enact a tax-credit scholarship program. Under the program, corporate donors receive dollar-for-dollar credits for contributions to approved scholarship funding organizations (SFOs).6 The SFOs provide scholarships to students from low-income families to attend private schools. During the 2017–2018 academic year, 107,095 Florida students received scholarships worth an average of $6,011 to attend 1,801 private schools.7 That’s about 4 percent of the 2.9 million students attending Florida public schools, which spend about $10,000 per pupil annually, on average.8

The program does not mandate open-enrollment policies, impose price controls, or require that private schools be accredited to receive scholarship students. The program does mandate that schools administer a standardized test to scholarship students in grades 3–10, but it does not mandate a single test.9 Instead, schools may choose from among a list of nationally norm-referenced tests.

The scholarships aid some of the most disadvantaged children in the state in terms of income and racial or ethnic background, and as measured by test scores. To be eligible, families can earn up to 260 percent of the federal poverty line ($65,260 annually for a family of four in 2018–2019), with priority given to families earning less than 185 percent of the poverty line ($46,435 for a family of four in 2018–2019).10 Families earning up to 200 percent of the poverty

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