Cream Skimming and Pushout of Students Participating in a Statewide Private School Voucher Program

A pervasive issue in the school choice literature is whether schools of choice cream skim students by enrolling high-achieving, less-challenging, or less-costly students. Similarly, schools of choice may “push out” low-achieving, more-challenging, or more-costly students. Using longitudinal student-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEducational evaluation and policy analysis
Main Authors Waddington, R. Joseph, Zimmer, Ron, Berends, Mark
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 17.07.2023
Subjects
school vouchers
school choice
pushout
educational policy
descriptive analysis
middle schools
elementary schools
private education
selective enrollment
cream skimming
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Summary:A pervasive issue in the school choice literature is whether schools of choice cream skim students by enrolling high-achieving, less-challenging, or less-costly students. Similarly, schools of choice may “push out” low-achieving, more-challenging, or more-costly students. Using longitudinal student-level data from Indiana, we created multiple measures to examine whether there is evidence consistent with the claims of voucher-participating private schools cream skimming the best students from public schools or pushing out voucher-receiving students. We do not find evidence consistent with the claim of cream skimming. However, we find evidence consistent with the claim of private schools pushing out the lowest-achieving voucher students. This is the first study to examine these two issues within a statewide private school voucher program.
ISSN:0162-3737
1935-1062
DOI:10.3102/01623737231183397