[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 7, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5850-S5851]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            SCHOOL VOUCHERS

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I believe all of our colleagues in the 
Senate will be interested in an article from today's New York Times 
entitled ``What Some Much-Noted Data Really Showed About Vouchers'' by 
Michael Winerip, pointing out the shocking flaws in a widely cited 
study released in 2000 by Paul E. Peterson on the benefits of private 
school voucher programs.
  It is clear that no research on vouchers has conclusively shown that 
private school students outperform public school students. Private 
school vouchers are not proven to work and should not be supported by 
Congress. Public funds should be used for public schools, not on 
dubious experiments to pay for a small number of students to attend 
private schools.
  The No Child Left Behind Act--passed last year with the strong 
support of President Bush and strong bipartisan support in Congress--is 
the best hope for improving elementary and secondary education. Its 
reforms ask more of schools, teachers, and students in communities 
across the country. Schools need as much funding and support as 
possible to ensure that no child is left behind. Every dollar in public 
funds that goes to private schools is a dollar less for public schools.
  Congress should support public schools, not abandon them. Proven 
effective reforms should be made--not just in a few schools, but in all 
schools; not just for a few students, but for all students. I urge my 
colleagues in Congress to reject voucher proposals and grant increased 
funds for public schools, and I ask unanimous consent that the New York 
Times article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From The New York Times, May 7, 2003]

         What Some Much-Noted Data Really Showed About Vouchers

                          (By Michael Winerip)

       In August of 2000, in the midst of the Bush-Gore 
     presidential race, a Harvard professor, Paul E. Peterson, 
     released a study saying that school vouchers significantly 
     improved test scores of black children. Professor Peterson 
     had conducted the most ambitious randomized experiment on 
     vouchers to date, and his results--showing that blacks using 
     vouchers to attend private schools had scored six percentile 
     points higher than a control group of blacks in public 
     schools--became big news.
       The Harvard professor appeared on CNN and ``The NewsHour 
     With Jim Lehrer.'' Conservative editorial writers and 
     columnists, including William Safire of The Times, cited the 
     Peterson study as proof that vouchers were the answer for 
     poor blacks, that Al Gore (a voucher opponent) was out of 
     touch with his black Democratic constituency and that George 
     W. Bush had it right.
       ``The facts are clear and persuasive: school vouchers 
     work,'' The Boston Herald editorialized on Aug. 30, 2000. 
     ``If candidates looked at facts, this one would be a no-
     brainer for Gore.''
       Then, three weeks later, professor Peterson's partner in 
     the study, Mathematica, a Princeton-based research firm, 
     issued a sharp dissent. Mathematica's report emphasized that 
     all the gains in Professor Peterson's experiment, conducted 
     in New York City, had come in just one of the five grades 
     studied, the sixth, and that the rest of the black pupils, as 
     well as Latinos and whites of all grades who used vouchers, 
     had shown no gains. Since there was no logical explanation 
     for this, Mathematica noted the chance of a statistical 
     fluke. ``Because gains are so concentrated in this single 
     group, one needs to be very cautious,'' it said.
       Several newspapers wrote about Mathematica's report, but, 
     coming three

[[Page S5851]]

     weeks after the first round of articles, these did not have 
     the same impact.
       And Professor Peterson, a big voucher supporter, continued, 
     undaunted. His 2002 book, ``The Education Gap,'' largely 
     ignored Mathematica's concerns and ballyhooed voucher gains 
     for blacks. ``The switch to a private school had 
     significantly positive impacts on the test scores of African-
     American students,'' he wrote.
       While he still couldn't explain why only blacks had gained, 
     he offered theories. Perhaps heavily black public schools 
     were even worse than urban Latino or white schools. Or, since 
     most vouchers in New York were used in Catholic schools, 
     perhaps a religious ``missionary commitment is required to 
     create a positive educational environment'' for blacks.
       David Myers, the lead researcher for Mathematica, is 
     hesitant to criticize Professor Peterson. (``I'm going to be 
     purposely vague on that,'' he said in an interview.) But he 
     did something much more decent and important. After many 
     requests from skeptical academics, he agreed to make the 
     entire database for the New York voucher study available to 
     independent researchers.
       A Princeton economist, Alan B. Krueger, took the offer, and 
     after two years recently concluded that Professor Peterson 
     had it all wrong--that no even black students using vouchers 
     had made any test gains. And Mr. Myers, Professor Peterson's 
     former research partner, agrees, calling Professor Krueger's 
     work ``a fine interpretation of the results.''
       What makes this a cautionary tale for political leaders 
     seeking to draft public policy from supposedly scientific 
     research is the mundane nature of the apparent 
     miscalculations. Professor Krueger concluded that the 
     original study had failed to count 292 black students whose 
     test scores should have been included. And once they are 
     added--making the sample larger and statistically more 
     reliable--vouchers appear to have made no difference for any 
     group.
       Some background. In 1997, 20,000 New York City students 
     each applied for a $1,400 voucher to private school through a 
     project financed by several foundations. A total of 1,300 
     were selected by lottery to get a voucher, and 1,300 others--
     the controls, who had wanted a voucher but were not 
     selected--were tracked in public schools. When the first test 
     results came back, the vouchers made no difference in test 
     scores for the 2,600 students as a whole. So the original 
     researchers tried breaking the group down by ethnicity and 
     race, and that's when they noted the sixth-grade test gains 
     for the black voucher group.
       But there was a problem. The original researchers had never 
     planned to break out students by race. As a result, their 
     definition of race was not well thought out: it depended 
     solely on the mother. In their data, a child with a black 
     mother and a white father was counted as black; a child with 
     a white mother and a black father was counted as white.
       When the father's race is considered, 78 more blacks are 
     added to the sample. Professor Krueger also found that 214 
     blacks had been unnecessarily eliminated from the results 
     because of incomplete background data. These corrections by 
     Professor Krueger expanded the total number of blacks in the 
     sample by 292, to 811 from 519.
       In recent weeks, Mr. Myers, of Mathematica, has reviewed 
     Professor Krueger's critique and found it impressive. Mr. 
     Myers has now concluded that Professor Krueger's adjustments 
     mean that ``the impact of a voucher offer is not 
     statistically significant.''
       It is scary how many prominent thinkers in this nation of 
     290 million were ready to make new policy from a single study 
     that appears to have gone from meaningful to meaningless 
     based on whether 292 children's test scores are discounted or 
     included. ``It's not a study I'd want to use to make public 
     policy,'' Mr. Myers said. ``I see this and go `whoa.' ''
       Professor Krueger of Princeton (who also writes a monthly 
     business column in The Times) said, ``This appeared to be 
     high-quality work, but it teaches you not to believe anything 
     until the data are made available.''
       As for Professor Peterson of Harvard, the star of 
     newspapers and TV news in 2000 remains curiously mum these 
     days. In a brief interview, he decline to comment on 
     Professor Krueger's or Mathematica's criticisms. He said he 
     stood by his conclusion that vouchers lifted black scores, 
     and would ``eventually'' respond in a ``technical paper.'' 
     But he said he would not discuss these matters with a 
     reporter.
       ``It's not appropriate,'' he said, ``to talk about complex, 
     methodologies in the news media.''

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