Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

School choice is a demand-side intervention that seeks to improve educational effectiveness through market-oriented competition. Private school vouchers have emerged as a crucial school choice reform across the globe. Vouchers allow parents to choose any school for their children and both government and privately-sponsored voucher programs exist. The effectiveness of voucher programs is fiercely disputed in both academic and policy circles. Eleven Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) of school vouchers have focused on student achievement. A thorough cost-effectiveness analysis of the experimental studies of school vouchers across the globe would provide the foundation for a greater scholarly consensus regarding the ability of school vouchers to improve outcomes for students.

This review adds to the literature by being the first to systematically analyze all Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) of private school vouchers in an international context from a cost-effectiveness perspective. Our analytic results focus on the RCTs because these are the “gold-standard” of program evaluation in terms of assessing causal relationships. The majority of RCTs studying the participant effects of school vouchers have been conducted in the United States. While voucher systems exist in many parts of the world, only a small number of voucher RCTs have been conducted outside the US.

Therefore, we present three cost-effectiveness analytic estimates of the impacts of school vouchers: (1) just in the U.S.; (2) just outside the U.S.; and (3) globally including the U.S. and all other countries. We also compare overall outcomes for reading and math scores for programs within the US vs. outside the US and publically funded vs. privately funded programs. This can be helpful for policymakers designing future private school voucher programs. The analysis shows that null findings in school voucher programs should be viewed from a cost-effectiveness perspective. Lastly, publicly funded programs have a higher cost-effectiveness that privately funded programs. It could be that parents feel more satisfied with the full funded nature of publicly funded programs.