Op-Ed: Playing politics with school vouchers

Mr. Winters, Given that you are writing about this recently released report, it would help if you represented it to the public responsibly. More than likely, readers of the WaTimes will not have access to the report in its entirety. Which, of course, is not helped by the fact that you provide absolutely zero context for the report (publisher of the report, title, date, etc...). Allow me to The vast majority of the findings in the report suggest that the school choice program has had no effects on student outcomes of interest. Any reading effects you cite were most likely occurring in the most advantaged subpopulations of students in DC and not necessarily the groups of students that the program was intended to help. This was one of the major findings of the report and you failed to include it. Here are the other major findings of the report: -After 2 years, there was no statistically significant difference in test scores in general between students who were offered an OSP scholarship (a voucher) and students who were not offered a scholarship. -The Program had a positive impact on overall parent satisfaction and parent perceptions of school safety, but not on students’ reports of satisfaction and safety. -This same pattern of findings holds when the analysis is conducted to determine the impact of using a scholarship rather than being offered a scholarship. -There were some impacts on subgroups of students, but adjustments for multiple comparisons indicate that these findings may be due to chance. -The second year impacts are generally consistent with those from the first year. As a reporter, it is your responsibility to present the complete and accurate facts to your readers. Please do better next time. One more point, if there are no positive impacts of the program (as even you have concluded in previous reporting), isn't there a better way to spend our education dollars? Perhaps on programs that do have a positive impact.