Voucher students see tests improve

BATON ROUGE — Louisiana students who attend private schools with taxpayer dollars have bounced back from initially dismal scores in math and English but aren’t outperforming their public school peers, according to a new report.

The review released Monday by the Education Research Alliance in New Orleans said that after three years, those voucher students were on par with public school students who tried and failed to land the assistance, according to a story in the city’s Advocate newspaper.

About 7,100 students receive vouchers in Louisiana, 87 percent of whom are black, the study said.

Supporters said the assistance provides students with a path out of poor-performing public schools. Opponents countered that vouchers rob financially strapped public schools of needed revenue. Louisiana spends about $40 million annually for the program.

The review — done by an organization based at Tulane University — compared how students who landed vouchers through a statewide lottery fared compared with those who tried but failed to qualify for the assistance and remained in public schools.

The study follows an earlier review from the organization that said voucher recipients did “significantly worse” than their peers in the first year, and “slightly less negative” after year two. The latest review said that after three years, voucher recipients were performing roughly the same as public school students in math and English/language arts.

In other areas, the Louisiana study said students with disabilities are less likely to receive special education services if they get vouchers. In addition, voucher students identified with disabilities were more likely to later lose those designations than students in public schools, the report says.