Private school vouchers and student achievement: An evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program

In 1990 Wisconsin began providing vouchers to a small number of low-income students to attend nonsectarian private schools. Controlling for individual fixed-effects, I compare the test scores of students selected to attend a participating private school with those of unsuccessful applicants and other students from the Milwaukee public schools. I find that students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program had faster math score gains than, but similar reading score gains to, the comparison groups. The results appear robust to data imputations and sample attrition, although these deficiencies of the data should be kept in mind when interpreting the results.