OR, WHAT IF THE SYSTEM WAS NEVER BROKEN?:

Twenty years on, my optimism seems to have been far too exuberant. Some studies suggest that voucher programs do modest good; others suggest that they do very little; and a few suggest that the impacts are actually negative. My overall takeaway from the literature is that voucher programs probably do a little bit of good. But the emphasis is on the word "little"; they are not a cure-all, or even much of a cure for anything. It was reasonable to think, in 1997, that voucher programs could change the world. Now we have two decades of evidence.

How did we get it so wrong? Many explanations have been proffered, starting with "You libertarians were getting high on your own supply." Maybe markets just aren't that great.

That explanation would be more convincing if non-market attempts at school reform had gone better. But during the same period, vast sums were poured into liberal projects like smaller class sizes, and the results have been entirely uninspiring. Now the mania is for universal pre-K, not so much because there's compelling evidence for great outcomes, but because at least we haven't tried it yet, and therefore don't know that it won't work.

Plausible candidates for the lackluster performance of voucher programs are legion: during the same period, charter schools provided public school choice, and perhaps the quality of public schools improved enough to make private vouchers unnecessary; perhaps it takes the market a while to respond to a voucher system by producing excellent schools; and (depressingly) perhaps it doesn't make much difference what we do in the schools, because most educational effects are driven by a combination of genetics and home environment.

But there's another possibility, suggested recently in an NBER working paper: Maybe vouchers don't improve school quality too much because quality is not what parents look for when they're choosing their children's schools.

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