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RELATED LINKSInternal LinksGrants to:
Profiles: External LinksJohn F. Witte's "Reply To Greene, Peterson and Du" Paul Peterson homepage at Hoover Institution Peterson bio at Harvard website MORE LINKSEducation section What Some Much-Noted Data Really Showed About Vouchers...In the midst of the Bush-Gore presidential race...Paul E. Peterson released a study saying that school vouchers significantly improved test scores of black children ... A Princeton economist...recently concluded [using Peterson's data] that Peterson had it all wrong -- that not even the black students using vouchers had made any test gains...It is scary how many prominent thinkers in this nation of 290 million were ready to make new policy from a single study that appears to have gone from meaningful to meaningless...
William Safire Vouchers Help Blacks[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a NY Times column written by William Safire embracing the debunked Peterson study (see link above)] "School vouchers make a big difference for black students. That is the conclusion of a two-year study in three cities -- New York, Washington and Dayton, Ohio -- conducted by a team from Harvard, the University of Wisconsin and the Brookings Institution. These are not hotbeds of right-wing ideology (sic)... This hard evidence is not what teacher unionists want to hear. 'It's the first controlled experiment in the school-choice area,' says Chester Finn, the Moynihan disciple who heads one of the dozen foundations that commissioned it. 'This gives us the highest-quality study we've ever had, and the result in three areas is unequivocal: School vouchers dramatically raise test scores for blacks.'"
Barbara Miner Who's Vouching for Vouchers?NO ONE REALLY KNOWS HOW CHILDREN IN MILWAUKEE'S VOUCHER SCHOOLS ARE FARING
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PERSON PROFILEPaul E. PetersonIs it research or propaganda?Conservative Professor Paul Peterson's work on school voucher programs raises serious ethical issuesPaul Peterson is the Harvard-based political scientist/researcher, partially funded by the Olin Foundation, who has provided very controverial research purporting to show that school vouchers tend to academically improve the lives of poor, inner city minority children. Unfortunately, Peterson's research methods have proven to be completely unreliable, if not outright fraudulent, in both intent and execution. Important research by Peterson was never peer reviewed (or, rejected by his peers), and first published by the Wall Street Journal. Despite this lack of veracity, Peterson's results have been picked up and trumpted by the conservative movement across the country (see right sidebar). Control Group? What Control Group?Take for example his research of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, begun in 1990. The State of Wisconsin's official evaluator of the program from 1990-1995 was John F. Witte, a Political Science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Using rigorous social science methodologies, and submitting his work to peer review, Witte found essentially no academic difference between school voucher students and regular Milwaukee Public Schools students. Indeed, in some very specific areas, the public school students actually fared better than their private school counterparts. But in 1996 Peterson reported a re-analysis of Witte's numbers that he had done along with Jay Greene and Jiangtao Du, titled "The Effectiveness of School Choice in Milwaukee: A Secondary Analysis of Data from the Program's Evaluation." Actually, the study had been released two days before Peterson's court testimony supporting the Milwaukee program, giving opponents no time to adequately analyze his conclusions in time for the court appearance. Now, three years later, researchers have broken down Peterson's "research" pointing out that, in Witte's words, "...the problems with this result are so numerous that I don't think anyone really believes it." Of course, there were earlier clues to the bogus nature of Peterson's research. First, the study had been submitted to an academic journal for peer review, but had been rejected! After the rejection, Peterson initially published some of his results in the Wall Street Journal, the same paper that touted other "scientists" such as the notoriously racist Charles Murray. Witte broke down Peterson's research in a long article in the journal The Phi Delta Kappan in September 1999, an article that has since been expanded into a book just published by the Princeton University Press, titled " The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America’s First Voucher Program." The political nature of Peterson's research cannot be overstated. Peterson's results have been picked up and amplified -- most often taken as gospel, with no rebuttal -- by the think tanks, journalists, and other operatives within the conservative movement, including right-wing ABC TV News reporter John Stossel. Here, for example, is Mitch Pearlstein of the Center of The American Experiment, a think tank based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, writing for his organization: "I cite research by scholars such as Paul Peterson of Harvard and the late James Coleman of the University of Chicago that demonstrates that inner-city kids tend to do better in Catholic and other private schools than they do in public schools.3 In light of such findings, I suggest that the very terms of the choice debate have changed; that the intellectual and moral burden has shifted--from people like myself who want to significantly change the way American education works to those who don't. When you get right down to it, why shouldn't poor kids, many of whom live in all kinds of turmoil, have a more financially realistic chance of winning an education that is academically sound and, if their parents so choose, spiritually nourishing?" [Editor's note: Emphasis added. The footnote above, refers to the Greene, Peterson and Jiangtao Du study.] There you see it, all laid out. Pearlstein laying claim to Peterson's indefensible research, purporting it as fact, and using it as a basis to argue that we should "significantly change the way American education works." In the February 1997 speech by Peterson at the Center, Pearlstein advertised that he had "good news" to report. Pearlstein wrote in the invitation to Peterson's speech that "If similar success [as in the two voucher programs] could be achieved for all minority students nationwide, it could close the learning gap separating white and minority test scoress...between one-third and one-half." That's quite a claim, one that, it turns out, is completely unsupportable (and was repeated all over the country, by the way). This wasn't the first or only time Pearlstein cited Peterson's research in such a way. Indeed, he has repeatedly used Peterson's research as the centerpiece of his incessant arguing to spend public money on private primary and secondary education. What, exactly is wrong with Peterson's research?Even Peterson's critics agree that the idea behind his study was sound. He postulated that there was something about the families who applied to be voucher students in Milwaukee that made them a unique group. Because of the nature of the voucher trial, all the applicants could not be accepted. In theory, if the rejected students all went back to public schools, and stayed there, and all the accepted students stayed at the voucher schools, after three to five years, the attainment of the students could be compared in a sort of natural experiment. However, before this "natural" experiment could even get underway, it was completely undermined by the fact that 52% of the rejected applicants didn't even return to the public schools during the first year, instead going to private schools, thus destroying the control group. Further, voucher schools were not required to readmit voucher students in subsequent years, and fully 1/3 of them returned to the public schools each year, and the admission to the voucher program itself was not random in that they were not required to accept handicapped students. There is also evidence that the non-readmitted students performed more poorly than their readmitted cohorts. There are other numerous other problems with this study, including the fact that by the fifth year, some of the cohorts were down to zero or one students, that three private voucher schools went bankrupt during the trial, and that one even ceased operating in the third year of the program. The bankruptcies forced more than 350 voucher students to change schools mid-year, two of the principals of these private schools were indicted, and by 1999 one was in prison. So, how does Pearlstein answer the charges that Peterson's research is bogus? I recently (2/2000) had the chance to extensively interview Pearlstein at his downtown Minneapolis office. For a little background, consider that Pearlstein presents himself as an expert on education, and he possesses a Ph.D. in educational administration from the University of Minnesota. Indeed, school vouchers could fairly be called an obsession with him. Since Pearlstein had invited Peterson to speak at the Center, and not invited Witte, I wondered what his justification for such a move might be. For starters, Pearlstein was unaware of the structure of Peterson's research! When I explained the research to him, Pearlstein dismissed the fact that Witte's research had been peer reviewed and published in an academic journal, and Peterson's had not (and had been published in the Wall Street Journal), claiming that the entire academy was liberally biased (completely ignoring the irony that his friend Peterson relied upon the academy for his entire reputation--see below). Pearlstein responded that, regardless of whether Peterson actually followed academic guidelines, he was a great researcher, and we could rely on his product by the fact that he was from Harvard and the University of Chicago! When I asked why he had invited only Peterson alone to speak at the Center, Pearlstein said it was because he agreed with him! IRS guidelines for charities specify the difference between propoganda (not allowed) and advocacy (allowed). I'll allow the gentle reader to decide which the Peterson presentation was. -- Rob Levine Here's an extended excerpt from a review done by the People for the American Way: Voucher Proponents' Bogus Claims of SuccessIndeed, it is not even clear that voucher programs produce a better education for the small share of students who participate. Despite loud claims by voucher supporters that experiments in Milwaukee and Cleveland have been successful, reviews are in fact quite mixed. State-sponsored evaluations of the programs have demonstrated negligible test-score gains, even though the students attending voucher schools benefited from a number of factors that have a marked impact on educational achievement - parents' education, socio-economic status, parents' academic expectations, and more. The conservative has conducted a profoundly deceptive public relations campaign seeking to persuade the media that the programs have been far more successful. In that effort, Harvard Professor Paul Peterson and colleagues, with funding from the pro-voucher Olin Foundation, have produced research that claims to demonstrate test-score gains. Other academics have roundly criticized Peterson for not submitting his work to academic peer review, opting instead to release his study with a press release and an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Once Peterson's work was examined by scholars its methodology was found sorely wanting. Most concluded that Peterson had compared a small, select group of voucher students to a tiny and disproportionately disadvantaged group of public school students, biasing results in favor of voucher students. Here's what Professor Bruce Fuller of the University of California at Berkley said: the study "is based on less than 80 students who lasted four years in just three choice schools. Complete data are not available on the other 2,900 children who spent less than four years or who could not be tracked. Would we believe a scientist who claimed that smoking has no harmful health effects based on a study that simply tracked smokers who were alive?"
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MORE LINKSKevin Franck Cutting Through Right-Wing Spin on Public EducationWhen the Going Gets Tough, Privatization Proponents Get Paul Peterson ...A senior research fellow at the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation, an organization that advocates publicly funded vouchers, implied that anyone who believes public schools perform better than private schools might be on drugs. Right-wing education scholar Chester Finn claimed that coverage of the study said more about the media than the state of public education...
Washington Post Researchers Question Peterson Results"Peterson ...said the difference between those families that accepted vouchers and those that did not was unimportant in making vital comparisons."
New York Times New Doubt Is Cast on Study That Backs Voucher EffortsTwo weeks ago, prominent researchers released a study showing significant gains by black students who had been given vouchers to help pay for private school. The finding lent support to backers of voucher programs at a time when they have become an election-year issue. But now a company that gathered data for the research in New York, one of three cities studied, says the gains, as measured by scores on standardized math and reading tests, were overstated by the lead researcher, a Harvard professor known within the academic community for his exuberant support of vouchers.
Washington Post Privately Financed Vouchers Help Black Students[Editor's note: This Washington Post report plugs the Peterson/Greene fraudulent "research" just prior to the 2000 election] "'While one can always say the evidence is inconclusive, denying that there are academic benefits from school choice is beginning to sound like tobacco companies denying the link between smoking and cancer,' Mr. Greene said."
Peterson cites at grant recipients
On Think Tank, a show on PBS
At Brookings Institution
At Urban Institute
At Heritage Foundation
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