Educational vouchers: Effectiveness,choice, and costs

Most of the policy discussion on the effects of educational vouchers has been premised on theoretical or ideological positions rather than evidence. This article analyzes a substantial body of recent empirical evidence on achievement differences between public and private schools; on who chooses and its probable impact on educational equity; and on the comparative costs of public and private schools and an overall voucher system. The findings indicate that: (1) results among numerous studies suggest no difference or only a slight advantage for private schools over public schools in student achievement for a given student, but evidence of substantially higher rates of graduation, college attendance, and college graduation for Catholic high school students; (2) evidence is consistent that educational choice leads to greater socioeconomic (SES) and racial segregation of students; and (3) evidence does not support the contention that costs of private schools are considerably lower than those of public schools, but the costs of an overall voucher infrastructure appear to exceed those of the present system.     

Why Don't Housing Choice Voucher Recipients Live Near Better Schools? Insights from Big Data

Housing choice vouchers provide low‐income households with additional income to spend on rental housing in the private market. The assistance vouchers provide is substantial, offering the potential to dramatically expand the neighborhoods—and associated public schools—that low‐income households can reach. However, existing research on the program suggests that housing choice voucher holders live in neighborhoods with schools that are no better than those accessible to other households with similar incomes. Households, in other words, do not seem to spend the additional income provided by the voucher to access better schools. In this analysis we rely on a large‐scale administrative data set to explore why voucher households typically do not live near to better schools, as measured by school‐level proficiency rates. We combine confidential administrative data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development on 1.4 million housing choice voucher holders in 15 states, with school‐level data from 5,841 different school districts, to examine why the average housing voucher holder does not live near to higher‐performing schools than otherwise similar households without vouchers. Specifically, we use the large‐scale administrative data set to test whether voucher holders living in areas with good schools nearby and slack housing markets move toward better schools when schools become salient for them—that is, when their oldest child becomes school eligible. We take advantage of the thick sample of households with young children provided through our administrative data to implement both a household fixed effects and a regression discontinuity design. Together these analyses shed light on whether voucher households are more likely to move toward better schools when schools are most relevant, and how market conditions shape that response. We find that families with vouchers are more likely to move toward a better school in the year before their oldest child meets the eligibility cutoff for kindergarten, suggesting salience matters. Further, the magnitude of the effect is larger in metropolitan areas with a relatively high share of affordable rental units located near high‐performing schools and in neighborhoods in close proximity to higher‐performing schools. Results suggest that, if given the appropriate information and opportunities, more voucher families would move to better schools when their children reach school age.     

Impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program: Achievement Effects for Students in Upper Elementary and Middle School

This paper examines the impact of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program on student achievement for low‐income students in upper elementary and middle school who used a voucher to transfer from public to private schools during the first four years of the program. We analyzed student‐level longitudinal data from public and private schools taking the same statewide standardized assessment. Overall, voucher students experienced an average achievement loss of 0.15 SDs in mathematics during their first year of attending a private school compared with matched students who remained in a public school. This loss persisted regardless of the length of time spent in a private school. In English/Language Arts, we did not observe statistically meaningful effects. Although school vouchers aim to provide greater educational opportunities for students, the goal of improving the academic performance of low‐income students who use a voucher to move to a private school has not yet been realized in Indiana.     

Housing Voucher Take‐Up and Labor Market Impacts

Low participation rates in government assistance programs are a major policy concern in the United States. This paper studies take‐up of Section 8 housing vouchers, a program in which take‐up rates are quite low among interested and eligible households. We link 18,109 households in Chicago that were offered vouchers through a lottery to administrative data and study how baseline employment, earnings, public assistance, arrests, residential location, and children's academic performance predict take‐up. Our analysis finds mixed evidence of whether the most disadvantaged or distressed households face the largest barriers to program participation. We also study the causal impact of peer behavior on take‐up by exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the timing of voucher offers. We find that the probability of lease‐up increases with the number of neighbors who recently received voucher offers. Finally, we explore the policy implications of increasing housing voucher take‐up by applying reweighting methods to existing causal impact estimates of voucher receipt. This analysis suggests that greater utilization of vouchers may lead to larger reductions in labor market activity. Differences in take‐up rates across settings may be important to consider when assessing the external validity of studies identifying the effects of public assistance programs.     

Participation in a national,means‐tested school voucher program

We use data from a sample of applicants to a national means‐tested school voucher program and a national sample of the population eligible for the program to evaluate the factors leading families to use school vouchers. Our analysis divides the process of voucher usage into two distinct stages: initial application and subsequent take‐up. Using a nested logit model, we find that some factors, like religious affiliation and religious service attendance, affect both stages. Others, like mother's education, affect only one (application). Still others, like ethnicity, have opposite effects at the two stages. Compared to Whites, minorities are more likely to apply for vouchers, but less likely to take them when given the opportunity. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Do Housing Vouchers Improve Academic Performance? Evidence from New York City

The Housing Choice Voucher program is currently the largest federally funded housing assistance program. Although the program aims to provide housing assistance, it also could affect children's educational outcomes by stabilizing their families, enabling them to move to better homes, neighborhoods, and schools, and increasing their disposable incomes. Using data from New York City, the nation's largest school district, we examine whether—and to what extent—housing vouchers improve educational outcomes for students whose families receive them. We match over 88,000 school-age voucher recipients to longitudinal public school records and estimate the impact of vouchers on academic performance through a comparison of students’ performance on standardized tests after voucher receipt to their pre-voucher performance. We exploit the conditionally random timing of voucher receipt to estimate a causal model. Results indicate that students in voucher households perform 0.05 standard deviations better in both English Language Arts and Mathematics in the years after they receive a voucher. We see significant racial differences in impacts, with small or no gains for black students but significant gains for Hispanic, Asian, and white students. Impacts appear to be driven largely by reduced rent burdens, increased disposable income, or a greater sense of residential security.     

The Reconcentration of Poverty: Patterns of Housing Voucher Use, 2000 to 2008

In theory, housing choice vouchers provide low-income families with increased neighborhood options. However, previous research is mixed regarding whether the program promotes integration. Examining the 50 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas, I find that households using vouchers are more economically and racially segregated than an extremely low-income comparison group. However, voucher households in areas with source-of-income protection laws are less racially segregated than voucher households in areas without such laws.     

School Vouchers and the New Politics of the Welfare State

School vouchers might seem a natural feature of the liberal welfare model of the U.S. and American society generally. However, for social democratic welfare states in Scandinavia, school vouchers would seem to be a contradiction. Nevertheless, school vouchers have faced severe resistance in the USA, and the program has so far not been adopted as a national educational reform, although sporadic and limited state‐level developments can be observed. In Sweden, however, the social democratic welfare state adopted a national, universal public voucher scheme in the early 1990s. The goal of this article is to explain this counter‐theoretical empirical puzzle. It is argued that the varying output from political processes on school vouchers in the USA and Sweden is to be explained by the different ways in which political institutions affect political decision making in the two countries.     

Dynamic selection effects in means‐tested,urban school voucher programs

Much of the controversy surrounding school vouchers, and privatization schemes generally, stems from concerns about social stratification. This paper identifies the form and magnitude of selection effects in a means‐tested New York City voucher program. It compares students who applied for vouchers, with the eligible population of public‐school students; those who initially used vouchers, with those who declined them; and those who remained in private schools, with those who eventually returned to public schools. Differences along the lines of ethnicity, residential mobility, mother's education, and income are observed. In addition, specific aspects of a child's education—parental satisfaction, school uniform requirements, and larger class sizes—all increased the length of time voucher students remained in private schools. Throughout the program's life span, however, the largest and most consistent effects revolved around families' religious identity and practices. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Mitigating apprehension about section 8 vouchers: The positive role of housing specialists in search and placement

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has found that Section 8 voucher recipients are often unable to secure apartments outside of high‐poverty areas in tight urban rental markets. However, intensive housing placement services greatly improve the success and mobility of voucher holders. Drawing on ethnographic research in the housing placement department of a private, nonprofit community‐based organization, I first describe how fundamental problems in implementing the public subsidy program in a tight private rental market generate apprehension among landlords and voucher recipients that can prevent the successful use of vouchers. Second, I demonstrate how housing placement specialists can dispel and overcome this apprehension through a variety of tactics that require extensive soft skills and a deep commitment to the mission of housing poor families.

These findings provide support for the increased use of housing placement services to improve success and mobility rates for Section 8 vouchers.     

Rooms for Improvement: A Qualitative Metasynthesis of the Housing Choice Voucher Program

This article synthesizes housing subsidy voucher research to explain why, when in theory vouchers enable users to move out of poor neighborhoods, in practice they often do not. This qualitative meta-analysis presents an examination of the assumptions of the program and their relationship to empirical findings.

Two themes emerged from this synthesis: market barriers and product problems. Data from a variety of studies and contexts portray recipients struggling to use vouchers in the private rental market due to market barriers, including lack of public transportation and the presence of discrimination. Product problems constrained freedom of choice about where to move and when to make a housing transition. These constraints manifest as compromised housing quality and low voucher utilization. This synthetic view cannot account for all outcomes or exceptional cases, but results suggest where participant experiences are generalizable and attributable to features of the housing market and structure of the program itself.     

Private Schools and the Parents that Choose Them: Empirical Evidence from the Danish School Voucher System

Research on the effect of school choice on student performance has generally been based on small-scale experiments or comparisons of Catholic and public schools in the United States. Recent studies indicate, however, that the market competition stemming from school vouchers does not affect all private schools equally. This study makes use of individual-level register data on the performance of more than 30,000 students in Denmark, where private schools have been voucher-financed for more than 100 years, while public schools are governed and financed by the politico-administrative system. Using an instrumental variable model to exclude selection effects, the results show no significant average effect of private schooling on final examination scores. However, a multilevel model shows that private schools of high socio-economic status perform better than similar public schools, while private schools of low socio-economic status under-perform – even for individual students with high socio-economic status. This indicates that the institutional setting of a voucher system is not enough to raise educational performance in general, arguably because some parents choose schools on the basis of non-academic criteria.     

Housing Choice Vouchers and Crime in Charlotte,NC

Recent media attention and research have focused on the effect of housing vouchers on crime, with different conclusions. The purpose of this study is to bring further evidence to the voucher–crime debate, using annual data from 2000 to 2009 for Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. We study the relationship between crime counts and housing vouchers with quantile regression models with year and census tract fixed effects. We found that voucher households are associated with increased crime, controlling for past crime levels. Estimates vary, however, with the concentration of vouchers in the neighborhood, with little impact in areas with low concentrations. Estimates also vary with the neighborhood crime level. We extend the literature by examining the effect of different voucher family types, finding no evidence that elderly households or nonelderly households without disabilities and without children are associated with more crime. However, we found a very significant positive association for nonelderly households without disabilities with children. Our results indicate that significant crime reductions could be accomplished by focusing U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, local housing agency, and criminal justice resources on the types of places and voucher families most at risk for crime problems when a family uses a voucher to move into a new neighborhood.     

Revenue-sharing voucher program (RSVP)

There has been a significant shift in government towards decentralized power and responsibility as exemplified by the State and Local Assistance Act. The trend occurs at a time when society faces the double challenge of encouraging more and better informed, public participation in decision-making, and also improving the efficiency in governmental delivery of services. A proposal is made to use general revenue sharing moneys to meet this dual challenge through a revenue sharing voucher program (RSVP). The program entails turning back to citizens the incoming funds in the form of vouchers to be allocated by them to various local government agencies. The implications for the City of Seattle are discussed as an example of the operation and the tradeoffs involved.     

Educational Vouchers: The Case for Public Choice Reconsidered

Parental choice and operational efficiency are the key features proponents use to promote the desirability of educational voucher programs. The argument is that educational vouchers increase competition among schools by allowing parents the freedom to choose which schools their children attend. In turn, competition improves the performance of individual schools. This article argues that, as currently put forth, the case for vouchers minimizes the special position of public schools with respect to their equity goals. Equity, arguably, has been one of the most significant tenets of public education policy in the last half-century. Moreover, vouchers have significant hidden costs that could compromise any efficiency.     

Child characteristics and successful use of housing vouchers: Estimates from the moving to opportunity demonstration

Abstract

Voucher‐based programs have become the most common form of housing assistance for low‐income families in the United States, yet only a slim majority of households that are offered vouchers actually move with them. This article uses data from 2,938 households in the Moving to Opportunity demonstration program to examine whether child characteristics influence the probability that a household will successfully use a housing voucher to lease‐up.

Our results suggest that while many child characteristics have little bearing on the use of housing vouchers, child health, behavioral, and educational problems, particularly the presence of multiple problems in a household, do have an influence. Households with two or more child problems are 7 percentage points less likely to move than those who have none of these problems or only one. Results suggest that such families may need additional support to benefit from housing vouchers or alternative types of affordable housing units.     

The cost‐effectiveness of the low‐income housing tax credit relative to vouchers: Evidence from six metropolitan areas

Abstract

How expensive is the Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program relative to vouchers? Are there any market conditions under which the supply‐based LIHTC could be more cost‐effective than demand‐based vouchers? This article examines these questions in six metropolitan areas—Boston, New York, San Jose (CA), Atlanta, Cleveland, and Miami. Controlling for family income and unit size, I compare the development subsidies of new‐construction LIHTC projects with the alternative 20‐year voucher cost in each area.

In general, the LIHTC is found to be more expensive than vouchers. The premium, however, varies significantly by voucher payment standard and local housing market. Assuming a payment standard of 100 percent of fair market rent, the LIHTC is only 2 percent more expensive than vouchers in San Jose, but more than twice as expensive as vouchers in Atlanta. Many factors account for these regional variations. This study emphasizes two: local market conditions and program administration.     

Comment on Jill Khadduri's “should the housing voucher program become a state‐administered block grant?” A housing voucher block grant is a bad idea

Abstract

Khadduri argues for a well‐designed voucher block grant, phased in over several years. But proposals under consideration are more likely to undermine the effectiveness of vouchers than address their limitations. The most important advantage of housing vouchers is that they give recipients the freedom to choose the kind of housing and the location that best meet their needs. Although the current program is not living up to its potential, strategies for making it work better can be implemented without a block grant. Supporters of block grants claim welfare reform as a model, but none of the factors that contributed to declining caseloads under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families apply to housing. The single biggest problem with the housing voucher program is that federal spending for affordable housing is woefully inadequate. Instead of addressing this issue, a block grant would make housing hardship a state rather than a federal problem.     

The impact of source of income laws on voucher utilization

Vouchers are lauded both for being the most efficient way of delivering housing assistance to needy households and for the potential to allow poor households to access better neighborhoods. The success of vouchers is of course predicated on recipients being able to successfully use a voucher. For a number of reasons, including discrimination by landlords on the basis of source of income (i.e. a voucher), voucher recipients frequently cannot find apartments to lease. Using a difference-in-differences approach the research reported here examines how Source of Income anti-discrimination laws affect the utilization of housing vouchers.

The findings indicate that utilization rates are higher among Local Housing Authorities in jurisdictions with Source of Income anti-discrimination laws. These findings suggest such laws can be an effective tool for increasing the rate at which vouchers are successfully utilized. In a time of scarce resources for affordable housing this is an important policy tool that should not be over looked.     

Lessons from New York City's Small Schools of Choice about High School Features that Promote Graduation for Disadvantaged Students

The present paper uses a rich dataset based on naturally-occurring lotteries for 68 new small non-selective high schools in New York City, which we refer to as small schools of choice (SSCs), to address two related questions: (1) What high school features are promising levers for increasing graduation rates for disadvantaged students? and (2) What high school features helped to produce SSCs’ positive impacts on graduation rates? Our findings provide suggestive evidence that school leadership quality, teacher empowerment, teacher mutual support, teacher evaluation and feedback, teacher professional development, data-driven instruction, teacher/parent communication, academic rigor, personalized learning, and teacher/student respect are promising levers for increasing graduation rates for disadvantaged students. Our findings also provide suggestive evidence that many of these school features explain part of the total average SSC effect on graduation rates, although most of this average effect remains unexplained. Lastly, our findings indicate that SSCs are clearly distinguishable from their counterfactual counterparts in terms of school features that were emphasized by SSC funders.