Public education advocates and teachers unions can now confidently proclaim “I told ya so.” The Times-Picayne/nola.com is reporting that a new study jointly conducted by the University of Arkansas and Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans finds that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s controversial voucher program for students in struggling public schools did more harm than good for the students who used vouchers to attend private and parochial schools. As The Times-Pic’s Danielle Dreilinger reports, the program was billed as “an exit hatch” but “it was more like a trap door.”
Voucher students, the paper reports, saw their math scores dive by 24 points below those the peers who remained in public schools after the first year of the program; their English scores fell by a more modest 8 points. The “students are learning less each year,” said Doug Harris, director of Tulane’s Education Research Alliance.
Read the story here.