More than a million U.S. students now participate in private school choice programs because of recent growth in vouchers, tax credit scholarships, education savings accounts, and tax credits. Given the rapid expansion in these programs, it is important to understand how they affect the students who participate in these programs and the students who remain in public schools.
Ohio’s Educational Choice Scholarship Program (EdChoice), which was enacted 20 years ago, provides a rare opportunity to study the long-term impacts of a statewide voucher program on both private and public-school students’ enrollment in and graduation from college. Prior research on EdChoice found that the program modestly improved the test scores of public-school students but harmed the achievement of students who used a voucher to attend private school.
This study from the Urban Institute tracks the college enrollment and degree attainment of more than 6,000 students who first participated in EdChoice between 2008 and 2014 and compare them with the outcomes of more than 500,000 students with similar demographic characteristics and student achievement who remained in public schools. About 1,400 of these EdChoice students are old enough for us to track through potential graduation with a bachelor’s degree.
The study found that students who used an EdChoice scholarship to attend private school were substantially more likely to enroll in and graduate from college than similar students who remained in public schools. For college enrollment, the impact of EdChoice participation was 15 percentage points, which represents a 32 percent increase over the public-school enrollment rate of 48 percent. For college graduation, the impact was nine percentage points, corresponding to a 60 percent increase above the public-school rate of 15 percent.