Contact:
Alex Molnar: (480) 797-7261, nepc.molnar@gmail.com
Faith Boninger: (480) 390-6736, fboninger@gmail.com
David S. Knight: (206) 221-3456, dsknight@uw.edu

Pandemic-Era Academic Setbacks Won't Be Fixed by School Choice

An NEPC Review funded by the Great Lakes Center

Key Takeaway: Policy recommendations in recent report are more likely to yield negative than positive results.

EAST LANSING, MI (November 22, 2022) - A new Buckeye Institute report recommends sweeping K-12 policy reforms in response to COVID-19 academic disruptions and what the report asserts to be declining confidence in public schools. However, a review of the report criticizes the analysis and cautions against its policy recommendations.

Professor David S. Knight of the University of Washington reviewed #StudentsFirst: Empowering Parents to Help Students Regain Lost Learning and found its policy recommendations to rely on broad, untested assumptions.

The report recommends the state rapidly expand three types of school choice or voucher-like policies—education savings accounts, public school choice, and tax credits for private school scholarship programs—combined with fiscal transparency.

The report includes a discussion of research, referencing several studies, but it fails to support its recommendations with direct evidence of benefits or consider potential unintended consequences, such as reduced student achievement, increased racial segregation, and reduced funding for public schools. Instead, the report relies on tenuous assumptions about predicted impacts of its favored policy reforms.

Professor Knight thus concludes that policymakers who read this report should carefully consider the assumptions embedded in the policy recommendations, the unintended consequences that may arise from adopting them, and the availability of alternative policy options.

Find the review, by David S. Knight, at:
https://www.greatlakescenter.org

Find #StudentsFirst: Empowering Parents to Help Students Regain Lost Learning,written by Greg R. Lawson and published by The Buckeye Institute, at:
https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/library/docLib/2022-09-06-Students-First-Empowering-Parents-to-Help-Students-Regain-Lost-Learning-policy-report.pdf

NEPC Reviews (http://thinktankreview.org) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: https://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces high-quality information in support of democratic deliberation about education policy. We publish original research, policy briefs, and expert third-party reviews of think tank reports. NEPC publications are written in accessible language and are intended for a broad audience that includes academic experts, policymakers, the media, and the general public. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

About The Great Lakes Center
The mission of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is to support and disseminate high quality research and reviews of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for use by those who advocate for education reform. Visit the Great Lakes Center Web Site at: https://www.greatlakescenter.org. Follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/greatlakescent. Find us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/GreatLakesCenter.

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The mission of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice is to support and disseminate high quality research and reviews of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for use by those who advocate for education reform.

Visit the Great Lakes Center website at https://www.greatlakescenter.org/