Ohio School Choice Improves Public Schools

by Bob Weeks on September 9, 2008

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has produced the report Promising Start — An Empirical Analysis of How EdChoice Vouchers Affect Ohio Public Schools, which finds these results:

This study finds that the EdChoice program produced academic improvements in voucher-eligible public schools. … This study adds to a large body of empirical research that consistently finds vouchers improve academic outcomes at public schools. Vouchers allow families to choose the right schools to meet their children’s needs and introduce competitive incentives for improvement that are lacking in the traditional government-run education system.

In Kansas, several powerful political forces align to squash any hope that Kansas schoolchildren may be helped by programs such as this. These actors include Governor Kathleen Sebelius, the chair of the Senate Education Committee Jean Schodorf, the teachers union, and local school boards like the one in Wichita. Ask them why Kansas schoolchildren should not benefit as do Ohio’s.

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Tagged as: Education, Kathleen Sebelius, School choice, Wichita and Kansas schools

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