From the article: “Students who previously attended struggling schools — a group the program is designed to help — showed no boost in test scores compared with their peers. Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, director of the institute, said one possible explanation is that those children lagged far behind academically and had trouble adjusting to what may be a more demanding classroom.”
This is probably quite accurate....that these students had some trouble adjusting to more academic demands. It is also important to note that they were looked at after only 2 years in the private schools. This is insufficient time to ascertain what is really taking place with their learning curves. It is equally obvious that the public schools want that $$$$ (as if it will bring any good results).
That does make quite a bit of sense...I had looked at some of the studies earlier and found that on the whole, although the most exclusive schools in D.C. claimed to be participating in the program, most of them didn't have any voucher students, because they said the voucher students couldn't meet their admission standards.
So we give the vouchers program a two-year trial period? And how many years have we given public education to prove itself? Or insufficient immigration enforcement? Or welfare benefits? Or a whole host of other great society programs? Since when is any government program judged on just two years? Or, just Republican ones? Okay then.
I agree. I’ve been a victim of inner city schools. They do not, and I mean DO NOT “teach”, they just make you repeat what the teacher’s doing.
I’m glad that my mother taught me while I was growing up because the schools would have made sure I would have fallen through the cracks due to my disability.