The Times Union gets it wrong about vouchers

The editor for the Times Union wrote a glowing piece about the virtue of vouchers saying things like: Now a study shows that vouchers can provide better education, especially in low-income neighborhoods.

A study from the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative Hoover Institution has documented the benefits in New York City.

The study included groups of students from kindergarten in 1997 to college enrollment in 2011.

The researchers followed students who won a voucher lottery with a group who did not, the control group. This is the gold standard of research.
The result: An African-American student who used a voucher to attend a private school was 24 percent more likely to enroll in college than one who did not.

“We know of no other voucher study that has been as successful at tracking students over such a long period of time,” wrote Mathew Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul Peterson of the Hoover Institution in The Wall Street Journal.

Vouchers can provide an escape from a failing school system as well as pressure the public schools to improve.

However when you go to the actual study it says things like:

“Overall, no significant impacts are observed.”

“The offer of a voucher is estimated to have increased college enrollment within three years of the student’s expected graduation from high school by 0.6 percentage points—a tiny, insignificant impact“

Notice a big difference between the two?

I guess editorialist are allowed to cherry pick stats to prove their point but for some reason I hope for better.

Even though the editor disagrees what we need to do is fix the probelms in public education and I beleive that is doable, not to outsource our chldren's education.