School vouchers: Source/amount of funds and effects on math/reading scores

The debate over the educational system in this country has mainly focused on the amount of money spent by the government. This thesis will examine whether the source of funding (partially private versus fully public) has an effect on the math and reading scores of the students in the system. School voucher programs have been a contentious idea ever since Milton Friedman proposed them to end the quasi-monopoly that public education had in this country in the 1950s. However, some policymakers have been ardently opposed to vouchers, defeating or limiting them as much as possible to ensure that public education remains the norm for the citizens of this country. Researchers have attempted to isolate the effects of vouchers on test scores, graduation rates, and dropout rates. Unfortunately, the small nature of the programs has not enabled analysts to determine if there is a generalizable and significant correlation between any of these variables.;Extensive analyses and comparisons with regards to the source and amount of money have not been performed concerning school voucher programs. The datasets I acquired for this project come from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Charlotte, North Carolina. Milwaukee funded their system much more generously while Charlotte provided a partial offset of private school tuition with participants supplementing the rest of the cost. My hypothesis is that privately-run, partially funded systems will perform better. The results do not prove this hypothesis and point to a slight decrease in test scores for those students participating in a private voucher system. However, the cost variable shows modest gains in math scores regardless of the source of the funds. While more money per voucher may be a wise policy choice, it will not routinely bear out higher test scores for these students. The gains are miniscule enough to question whether fully funding the cost of tuition at a private school is necessary. Regardless of these results, students who accepted and used the voucher had dramatic increases in both math and reading test scores. In short, vouchers have made a positive difference for students who utilized them, regardless of the source/amount of funding.