What have been the results of this? An overall boom to everybody: the students that went to private schools and more importantly, the students in that previously failing school.

The Manhattan Institute found:

* Florida’s low-performing schools are improving in direct proportion to the challenge they face from voucher competition. These improvements are real, not the result of test gaming, demographic shifts, or the statistical phenomenon of “regression to the mean.”

* Schools already facing competition from vouchers showed the greatest improvements of all five categories of low-performing schools, improving by 9.3 scale score points on the FCAT math test, 10.1 points on the FCAT reading test, and 5.1 percentile points on the Stanford-9 math test relative to Florida public schools that were not in any low-performing category.

* Schools threatened with the prospect of vouchers showed the second greatest improvements, making relative gains of 6.7 scale points on the FCAT math test, 8.2 points on the FCAT reading test, and 3.0 percentile points on the Stanford-9 math test.

* Low-performing schools that have never received any grade other than a D, or that have received at least one D since FCAT grading began, produced small and indistinguishable gains, respectively, relative to Florida public schools that were not low-performing. While these schools were similar to schools facing voucher competition, they failed to make similar gains in the absence of competitive incentives.

* Some researchers theorize that failing schools improve because of the stigma of a failing grade rather than the threat of voucher competition. The results of this study contradict this thesis. Schools that received one F in 1998-99 but none since are no longer exposed to the potential of voucher competition. These schools actually lost ground relative to non-low-performing Florida public schools, supporting the conclusion that once the threat of vouchers goes away, so does the incentive for failing schools to improve.

In other words, vouchers - through competition - can produce gains in schools that more money can never even dream of doing. And more importantly, these gains are across the board, both for the (mostly low income minority) students that attend private schools and for the (mostly low income minority) students that now attend an improving school, as opposed to a previously failing school.

What has been the Democrat response to such progress? A court battle to try and shut the program down.

However, this needs to be done in coordination with increased funding and improvement of public schools. I fear this is a finite resource and all of the students who qualify acedemically for these private schools would thrive and the less qualified acedemically challenged students would be left to rot in even more miserable public schools. As it is now the next federal budet proposes significant cuts to education.