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Vouchers work: Modest Florida program yielded quick gains (San Diego Union-Tribune, May 27, 2008)

[A]long comes research that makes an empirical case that vouchers work. Princeton University economist Cecilia Elena Rouse and three colleagues took a close look at the results of Florida's A+ voucher program from 2002-2007, aided by a massive, detailed study of practices at thousands of individual schools.

The program was far from ambitious. The only eligible students were those in schools that got a failing grade twice within four years from state evaluators. The vouchers were for limited sums.

Yet thousands of families took advantage of them. One result, according to Rouse's report: The schools that were losing students quickly changed their ways and generally improved on test scores – even though they had lost many of their top students to other schools. Why? Because funding in Florida – as in California – is based on average daily attendance. Money (or a threatened loss of it) motivates.

Alas, there's a depressing twist to this story. At the behest of teachers unions, the A+ voucher program was thrown out by Florida's notoriously liberal Supreme Court on highly dubious grounds. But before its demise, at least the program yielded hard evidence that vouchers work.