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-in come students to attend nonsectarian private schools. Controlling for individual fixed-effects, I compare the test scores of students select ed to attend a participating private school with those of unsuccessful applicants and other students from the Milwaukee public schools. I fi nd that students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program had faster m ath score gains than, but similar reading score gains to, the comparis on groups. The results appear robust to data imputations and sample at trition, although these deficiencies of the data should be kept in min d when interpreting the results.