And to answer the question in the last post, about the reason for not shifting, the best answer is that there must be a method to give schools cause to use the best practices, and market incentives are a great method.

But if that is their only reason for supporting vouchers, then what would be their reason for not shifting their alliegance to another “prescription” once it has been shown to produce greater learning gains?

We have to make sure we are publicly making the case that parental choice is fundamental to who we are as a Democracy and not simply a means to helping the USA compete globally.

So again, I am not challenging the evidence that vouchers have positive impacts on student achievement. I am simply trying put the evidence in perspective.

“No wonder the voucher debate is so heated and inconclusive. In some ways, the arguments on both sides miss the point. Proponents of both sides share old, unexamined assumptions. For example, the argument that vouchers can be used to “keep heat on failing public schools” assumes that saving and improving all public schools is the main priority. Emphasis on “quality” and “higher standards,” while important, assumes that test scores measure the only purpose of schooling. Talk of “cost savings” and “market efficiency” assumes the bottom line is the major concern.

[...]

The point is that all these unexamined assumptions need to be brought out in to the open, clarified, and scrutinized. Objections to vouchers and other school choice options must not be allowed to distract us from the deeper, more fundamental, issues surrounding the public school monopoly: (1) the injustice that, in this free society, the state and not the parents determines the objectives of education, and (2) the absurdity of the claim that education can be “neutral” with respect to religion. We should begin by acknowledging that education depends on a community of meaning, that key factors are relationships and a value system, that non-public schools often do it better, and that education goes better when kids are in the schools where they and their parents want them to be.

[...]

Until these deeper, more fundamental issues are faced, unless the debates are recast at a more foundational level, the unending calls for reform simply waste time. Stricter certification requirements for teachers, decentralized decision-making, “feel-good” business-school partnerships, massive infusions of cash from foundations, higher standards and more frequent tests, and so on, and so on – all miss the most important point. As Candace Allen, the 1989 Colorado Enterprising Teacher of the Year, put it, “It’s time to lay down the weapons of reform… The more we reform, the more we bind ourselves to the system. What we need, simply, is liberty.”

– Steven C. Vryhof, Between Memory and Vision: The Case for Faith-Based Schooling, pg. 149-150

That having been said, I have said before and will gladly say again that there are other reasons to support school choice besides just the well-established empirical fact that they improve test scores, so even if there were some doubt about that I would still support them. I would just have one fewer reasons to do so.

I’m not making a market argument, or really any argument, about the desirability of school choice. I am simply trying to summarize the high quality research on a particular question. Armed with that information people can make whatever argument for or against school choice they like.