Vouchers failed to boost achievement by black students in N.Y., study says. (People & Events).A researcher at Princeton University Princeton University, at Princeton, N.J.; coeducational; chartered 1746, opened 1747, rechartered 1748, called the College of New Jersey until 1896. Schools and Research Facilities has concluded that African-American children in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. who received vouchers through a privately funded program did not receive academic gains. The report by Alan B. Krueger Alan B. Krueger (born September 17, 1960) is a U.S. economist, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. , a professor of economics and public policy, analyzed data presented last year by Harvard University Harvard University, mainly at Cambridge, Mass., including Harvard College, the oldest American college. Harvard College Harvard College, originally for men, was founded in 1636 with a grant from the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Professor of Government Paul E. Peterson Paul E. Peterson is a leading scholar on education reform.[1] His work has largely focused on the importance of parental choice for improving school outcomes. He is Editor-In-Chief of Education Next that found black students in the voucher schools scoring 5.5 points higher on standardized tests than their counterparts in public schools. Peterson did not find the same effect for Hispanic students who received vouchers under the program, which has been in operation since 1997. That fact intrigued Krueger, who requested the test data from Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., a private group based in Princeton, N.J. Krueger's study of the data showed no academic gains for African-American students in the voucher plan, reported Education Week. "This research has really been blown out of proportion," Krueger said at an April 1 press conference. "For the most representative sample of black elementary school elementary school: see school. students, offering a voucher had no statistically discernible impact on achievement scores in the New York City experiment." In analyzing the data, Krueger concluded that Peterson had erred by omitting too many children from the statistical sample. He also found that allowing a parent or guardian to state a child's race led to children of mixed race being omitted from the sample when they should have been included. Including the omitted children, Krueger found a gain of only 1.44 percentile percentile, n the number in a frequency distribution below which a certain percentage of fees will fall. E.g., the ninetieth percentile is the number that divides the distribution of fees into the lower 90% and the upper 10%, or that fee level points on standardized tests, a figure that is not statistically significant. Peterson was invited to attend the press conference but declined. He stood by his original findings, telling Education Week that he plans to respond to Krueger's study in detail soon. Voucher opponents have been skeptical of Peterson's findings since he is a known voucher advocate who has testified in favor of the plans in court and has written opinion pieces criticizing anti-voucher groups. |
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