Major study finds that while not a silver bullet, school choice helps more than it hurts because it hurts very little | Eastern North Carolina Now

    A long awaited major study of the effects of school choice has now been published. You can read about it by clicking here. The study was essentially a review of the literature on hundreds of research projects looking at various issues related to school choice.

    An oversimplification of what they found is that choice helps more than it hurts. That is true primarily because it seldom hurts anyone. The positive indicates and not uniformly great so there are no silver bullets in the research that can be replicated across the board.

   Significantly, a number of studies showed that student performance, mainly in reading and math increased in both choice schools as well as the schools students could choose to leave.

   One of the most interesting findings was that in general choice did not reduce the marginal resources available to the "leaving schools." That is the reductions in revenue from the loss of students was not as great as the reductions in marginal costs. So the net affect was a positive one on the leaving schools.

    These conclusion represent a synthesis of a number of studies. There are individual studies that show different conclusions but overall, it appears that a legitimate conclusion is that while choice is not a panacea, neither does it hurt school that are left.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.