This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Competition from a long-running voucher program in Milwaukee has not consistently improved that city's public schools, according to an Economic Policy Institute study released today.

"Schools are not like the marketplace: Competition doesn't automatically make things better," study co-author and Stanford University professor Martin Carnoy said in a statement. "The evidence does not support advocates' claims that voucher schools raise academic achievement."

It's a finding that's sure to fuel Utah's voucher debate. Voucher opponents, both in Utah and Milwaukee, said they're not surprised by the study's findings. Voucher supporters say the programs are more about helping students than improving public schools.

"Vouchers have never created any harm," said Leah Barker, spokeswoman for the Utah pro-voucher group Parents for Choice in Education. "What our advocacy revolves around is really giving parents the opportunity to choose a good education."

Milwaukee's program, which started in 1990, is significantly different from the one Utah voters will consider in a November referendum.

Milwaukee's program gives vouchers only to low-income students to attend private schools, whereas Utah's program would give vouchers to students from families of all income levels. Also, students who receive vouchers to attend Milwaukee private schools don't have to pay any additional tuition, whereas in Utah, families that accept vouchers would likely still have to pay some tuition.

Still, Milwaukee's program, which included 121 private schools and 17,410 students as of January, stands as an example for some Utahns considering vouchers.

"The bottom line claim of the opposition is that vouchers will make our schools better," said Utahns for Public Schools member Kim Burningham. "If there's questions about that, then that's important."

Others, however, say voucher programs don't hurt public schools but do frequently help students.

Jay Greene, a University of Arkansas professor who has researched Milwaukee's voucher program, said no study he knows of has shown that voucher programs hurt public schools.

Some studies, he said, show voucher programs improve public schools and others, such as the one released today, show they have no effect on public schools' performance. Greene is part of a team of researchers starting a five-year study of Milwaukee's voucher system. At least one of the authors of the Economic Policy Institute's study is also on that team.

"You can't make an overall conclusion from a single study of a single program," Greene said. "There is some reason to hope a voucher program in Utah would be helpful to schools in Utah and not hurtful."

Voucher opponents, however, both here and in Milwaukee, argue that voucher programs do cause harm to public schools by stealing money and other resources, if not by lowering test scores.

"The only competition that we've really seen between public schools and voucher schools in Milwaukee has been competition for resources," said Dennis Oulahan, Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association president. "Public schools lost big time."

Similarly, the anti-voucher group Utahns for Public Schools criticizes the cost of a voucher program in Utah estimated at $429 million over 13 years, according to the Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst.

"For the amount of money it would cost us to implement this voucher program, we could actually help public schools if we were to invest in lowering class sizes or investing in teacher recruitment," said Utahns for Public Schools spokeswoman Lisa Johnson. "With our resources being as limited as they are, we think we ought to use those resources wisely in a way that will help the most people."

How vouchers affect public schools

* An Economic Policy Institute study released today looked at data such as test scores for Milwaukee public elementary schools from 1996 to 2004.

* Researchers found that public schools improved for two years following expansion of the voucher program in 1998. Researchers said that improvement was likely due to the threat of competition from the expanding voucher program, but the higher achievement did not last.

* Those mixed results led researchers to conclude that the argument that competition from vouchers improves the performance of public schools is not a compelling one.