Study shows Chile’s school voucher program increased graduation rates
RENO, Nev. – With the effectiveness of school vouchers a hot topic of debate, researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chile have completed a lengthy study on the effects of Chile’s school reforms in 1981. Along with other school decentralization efforts, the reforms included making Chile the only nation in the world to have a nationwide school voucher program.
Nevada, Pennsylvania and Chile researchers team up to complete massive study.
Most notably, the study, which looked at students who began school in the early 1970s all the way up through students who began school in the early ‘90s, showed that the reforms increased high school graduation rates by 3.6 percent, and increased college-going rates by 3.1 percent. It also increased the rate of those completing at least two years of college by 2.6 percent, and the rate of those completing at least four years of college by 1.8 percent. The voucher program also significantly increased the demand for private subsidized schools and decreased the demand for both public and nonsubsidized private schools.
In addition, although opponents of school voucher programs have long theorized that vouchers would mostly benefit the rich, this study showed that individuals from poor and non-poor backgrounds in Chile, on average, experienced similar educational attainment gains under the voucher program. And, there was also a modest reduction in earnings inequity once the voucher reforms were enacted. However, overall, the reforms did not lead to increased overall average earnings.
“The reform reduced the number of people ages 16 to 25 in the workforce by about 2 percent,” explained Sankar Mukhopadhyay, assistant professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Reno, “because more people were staying in school longer. So, the earnings benefits of having greater educational attainment were at least partly offset by the delay in entering the workforce.”
Read more at: http://www.educationnews.org/pr_releases/93785.html?print
