policymakers demonstrate

168 Simon Burgess
Choice as a Voucher
The idea of an educational voucher is that it entitles a child to go to a different
school than her default or ‘normal’ school. Details vary hugely by scheme,
but in essence it is seen as an ‘escape’ from a low-quality local school. This is
generally a specific entitlement (for example, Figlio and Page, 2002 consider
a scheme in Florida in which students in ‘failing’ schools are given vouchers,
which they can use to move to an alternative school) rather than a system-wide
assignment mechanism, although it is sometimes combined in system-wide
reforms as in Sweden. The outside option school can be a private school (as
in Sweden, though with capped fees) or a charter school as is often the case in
the US. The biggest voucher programmes are in Chile and Colombia (see Bettinger
et al., 2011, for a survey) but they are also part of the system in Sweden
and the Netherlands; and of course in the US.
In all of these cases, there are two main research and policy questions: what
is the impact of the voucher on the individual who receives it? And what
is the impact on the system as a whole, on those ‘left behind’ inthelowperforming
schools? There are also complex general-equilibrium theoretical
issues in voucher schemes that are summarized by Epple and Romano (2012).
There still appear to be no definitive answers to the two core empirical questions.
In a substantial recent review, Epple et al. (2015) argue that the bulk of
the findings suggest no significant effect, yet ‘multiple positive findings support
continued exploration’. The task now seems to be to understand the role of the
context in determining the variation in outcomes. In surveying work outside
the US, Bettinger et al. (2011) argue that evidence from Columbia on the
impact on the voucher-user is possibly the strongest, but it may not be
causal. On the second question, there is some evidence that the system
improved in Sweden (for example, Björklund et al., 2004 and Böhlmark and
Lindahl, 2007) but it is difficult to single out the voucher component as
many reforms were introduced together in 1992. More recently Böhlmark and
Lindahl (2012) now find small positive results from competition and choice,
ten years after the reform.
Evidence from the US is also complex and contested, and generalizing is
difficult given the differences in design (Ladd, 2002) and in some cases small
numbers. The evidence on the impact on the voucher-using student is mixed.
Peterson et al. (2003), for example, examine data from three privately funded
school voucher programmes in New York, Washington DC and Dayton, Ohio.
In all three schemes, a lottery is used to allocate vouchers among eligible (low
income) families, and the voucher does not cover full costs. Test-score gains
from switching to private schools are evident for African-Americans but not
for students from other ethnic backgrounds. Hoxby’s (2003b) review of the
evidence from recent studies using randomized control groups of students from
lottery allocation mechanisms shows the same. Cullen et al. (2006) collect data