My colleagues from the School Choice Demonstration Project and I just released the official third year reports on the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). In addition to the experimental study on student test scores, my coauthors and I released a descriptive analysis of the types of private schools that chose to participate in the voucher program.
Positive Test Score Trend
The main report indicates that the LSP had negative impacts on student math test scores for the first two years of the program. Nonetheless, the program did not have any statistically significant impacts on student achievement by the end of year three. These results can be found in Figure 1 (from the report) below:
Source: Mills & Wolf (2017). “How Has the Louisiana Scholarship Program Affected Students? A Comprehensive Summary of Effects After Three Years.” School Choice Demonstration Project, Department of Education Reform, University of Arkansas.
This upward trend is not unusual. The recent meta-analysis of 19 experimental voucher studies shows that private school choice programs are better at shaping test scores after a few years. This is likely because children need to adjust to their new educational settings and private institutions must respond to the environmental shift in the market for schooling.