Obviously, something must be done. But how the state opted to solve the problem is, in my opinion, as harmful as the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment* was. Let me explain.
In 2012, then Louisiana Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal expanded an experiment on impoverished Black children (and a few others) known as the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). As part of the program, children attending public schools rated below average can enter a lottery for LSP vouchers providing tuition at eligible private schools of their choice. As the average voucher paid the private school $5,311 per year and the average cost of the public schools from state and local sources was $8,605, the voucher program resulted in a 38 percent savings for participating students.
Participating LSP schools, when compared to other private schools, are more likely to be affiliated with the Catholic church, more likely to serve Black students, and more likely to have had sharp declines in enrollment before joining the program. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Louisiana Scholarship Program is a way to use state money to support failing, mainly Catholic, private schools, while reducing support for public education.
Some might say that all that is beside the point (or a debate for another day). The real question is: Does the LSP improve the education of students receiving the vouchers, giving them a choice of schools they wish to attend? Or, in other words, what happens to children who are deliberately sent to failing schools and have the amounts spent on their educations reduced by more than one-third?
A recent National Bureau of Economic Research paper has carefully examined the Louisiana Scholarship Program. The researchers, Atila Abulkadiroglu of Duke University, Parag A. Pathak of MIT and Christopher Walters of UC Berkeley, found that “LSP participation substantially reduces academic achievement.” To be specific:
Attendance at an LSP-eligible private school lowers math scores by 0.4 standard deviations and increases the likelihood of a failing score by 50 percent. Voucher effects for reading, science and social studies are also negative and large.
The exemplary research of Abulkadiroglu, Pathak and Walters tells us that giving impoverished Black students less funding for their education and placing them in failing private schools does not improve their educational opportunities.
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