August is back-to-school time, but for many families that means a return to poor-performing schools. The perennial question is how to improve performance. The use of school vouchers is one proposed but highly debated solution. This article examines the history of school vouchers and the major...

Voucher programs are intended to raise the academic achievement of students, but, unfortunately, so far the evidence suggests that Cleveland’s voucher students perform no better than their counterparts in public schools.

The authors review the existing literature on the impact of school vouchers on student achievement. They conclude that expectations about the ability of vouchers to drastically improve student achievement, at least as measured by test scores, should be tempered by the results of the studies to...

In this article, we review the empirical evidence on the impact of education vouchers on student achievement, and briefly discuss the evidence from other forms of school choice. The best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered education vouchers, most of...

According to a study featured in the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's 2005 Annual Report, differences in state income levels can be explained largely by two factors: innovation and workforce skills. The study's findings suggest that increasing a region's knowledge base should be a primary...

Upstate New York's weak population and labor force growth in recent years has raised concerns about a loss of educated workers. Indeed, the region has seen a net outflow of college-educated people. This issue of Upstate New York At-a-Glance finds that this net outflow reflects a low rate of...

Conservatively speaking, a college graduate generates $142,000 in state fiscal benefits over time while costing a state only $60,500. But trends in higher education allocations (4.1 percent of total state spending nationwide in 1984; 1.8 percent in 2004) suggest states have become shortsighted.