Impact of Voucher Design on Public School Performance: Evidence from Florida and Milwaukee Voucher Programs

This article compares two alternative voucher designs implemented in the U.S. The Milwaukee program was a “voucher shock” program that made low-income students eligible for vouchers. The Florida program was an accountability-tied voucher program that faced failing schools with “threat of vouchers” and stigma. In the context of a formal theoretical model, the study argues that the threatened schools will improve under the Florida-type program and this improvement will exceed that of the corresponding treated schools under the Milwaukee-type program. Using school-level scores from Florida and Wisconsin, and a difference-in-differences estimation strategy in trends, it then finds strong support in favor of these predictions.