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The Guardsmen Scholarship Program seeks to do the best job possible helping underprivileged children receive better educations. Our program is supported by recent research about the methods of the most effective of such programs.
A Survey of Results from Voucher Experiments: Where We are and What We Know
Jay P. Greene, Ph.D., Manhattan Institute
This article analyzes the results of research studies of the performance of students in private voucher programs. The studies found modest but consistent test score improvements for low-income minority children receiving private vouchers. (Conversely, the research finds little or no test score benefit for suburban, middle class, white students, a category virtually none of Guardsmen scholarship recipients falls in to.) The studies examined in this paper employed control groups, allowing comparisons over time of presumably identical groups of kids who did not receive scholarships. These control group studies track test performance in programs that, like the Guardsmen program, award scholarships by lottery.
School Choice and School Productivity (or Could School Choice be a Tide that Lifts All Boats?)
Caroline M. Hoxby, Ph.D., Harvard University Department of Economics
This study refutes the notion that vouchers hurt public schools and instead demonstrates in a rigorous fashion that competition from vouchers helps public schools by instilling competitive pressure on administrators and teachers. Hoxby's rigorous approach leads her to dedicate much of this 76-page study to documenting her methodology, so readers interested in cutting to the chase should go to section V, her study of the voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Phoenix. Hoxby resides in Harvard's Department of Economics, as opposed to the Education Department or the Kennedy School of Government.
California Index of Leading Education Indicators, 2000 Edition
Pacific Research Institute
Despite its dry title, this updated report provides a provocative ongoing analysis of California's public education system in a variety of dimensions, such as education spending trends, standardized test performance, teacher quality and bilingual education. Pacific Research Institute is a conservative think tank and tends to be quite critical of the public education status quo in general. For those interested in education reform, the report finds that public education's problems are systemic rather than the result of insufficient funding.
Helping Hand: How Private Philanthropy and Catholic Schools Serve Low-Income Children in Los Angeles
Pacific Research Institute
Forty percent of the schools the Guardsmen support are Catholic, and the demographics in the San Francisco Bay Area are comparable to those of Los Angeles. The study addresses how Catholic schools out-perform their public school counterparts across a surprising variety of measures, despite the Catholic schools having larger class sizes, and paying teachers substantially less. The study seeks to dispel the notion that Catholic schools' advantage stems primarily from student selection by pointing instead to areas such as effective principals, motivated teachers, and the higher accountability that comes from serving tuition-paying parents. The report also shows that Los Angeles' Catholic school payrolls contain one-tenth as many non-teachers relative to teachers compared to the LAUSD payroll (see page 13 of the report).
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