Side effects in education: Winners and losers in school voucher programs 

When evaluating an education initiative, look beyond the average to consider its effects on all students. 

In the same way that different people can have different responses to the same medical treatment because of individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle, students can have different reactions to the same educational treatment because of their individual conditions. In other words, what works for one student can hurt another. Because of this, interventions in education, be they policy or practice, can have both positive, intended, and desirable effects and, at the same time, adverse and unwanted side effects (Zhao, 2018). In the December 2018 Kappan, Rick Hess and Michael McShane describe such side effects as “happy (and not so happy) accidents” and consider how they played out in the education reforms of the Bush-Obama era. I believe the idea can also apply to the debate about school vouchers. 

In the 1950s, the free-market economist Milton Friedman, a Nobel winner in his field, proposed turning public education into a free market through school choice (Fowler, 2002; Friedman, 1955; Greene, 2011). The debate has become increasingly fierce over the years as states have implemented various forms of school choice, such as public charter schools, magnet schools, and cross-district choices, resulting in greater levels of privatization and marketization (Ravitch, 2013). The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president in 2016 and his appointment of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education have raised the stakes because, to many, their strong support for vouchers amounts to using public funds to support private, and even religious, schools (Willingham, 2017).