The Effects of Statewide Private School Choice on College Enrollment and Graduation

E D U C A T I O N P O L I C Y P R OG R A M R E S E A R C H R E P O R T The Effects of Statewide Private School Choice on College Enrollment and Graduation Evidence from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program Matthew M. Chingos Daniel Kuehn September 2017 (updated December 2017) A B O U T T H E U R B A N I N S TI T U T E The nonprofit Urban Institute is dedicated to elevating the debate on social and economic policy. For nearly five decades, Urban scholars have conducted research and offered evidence-based solutions that improve lives and strengthen communities across a rapidly urbanizing world. Their objective research helps expand opportunities for all, reduce hardship among the most vulnerable, and strengthen the effectiveness of the public sector. Copyright © September 2017. Urban Institute. Permission is granted for reproduction of this file, with attribution to the Urban Institute. Cover image by Tim Meko. Contents Acknowledgments iv Executive Summary v Errata vii The Effects of Statewide Private School Choice on College Enrollment and Graduation 1 Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program 3 History and Eligibility Rules 3 Previous Research on the FTC Scholarship 5 Our Research Questions 6 Data 7 Sample Selection 8 Outcome Variables 10 Methods 12 Propensity Score Matching Design 13 Treatment Effect Estimation 14 Descriptive Statistics 15 Results 18 College Enrollment 18 Persistence and Degree Attainment 22 Subgroups 24 Robustness 25 Conclusion 26 Appendix A. Additional Tables 29 Notes 40 References 42 About the Authors 44 Statement of Independence 45 IV A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S Acknowledgments This report was funded by the Bill and Susan Oberndorf Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, Kate and Bill Duhamel, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, and the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation. We are grateful to them and to all our funders, who make it possible for Urban to advance its mission. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. Funders do not determine research findings or the insights and recommendations of Urban experts. Further information on the Urban Institute’s funding principles is available at www.urban.org/support. We thank Kristin Blagg, Erica Blom, David Figlio, Cassandra Hart, Brian Kisida, Constance Lindsay, and Martin West for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this report. We also thank the Florida Department of Education (especially Eric Christesen and Tammy Duncan) and Step Up for Students (especially Dava Hankerson Fedrick) for sharing the data used in this study. E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y V Executive Summary Policies that allow students to use public dollars to attend private schools have increased rapidly in recent years. These private school choice programs include vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and education savings accounts. Over the past decade, the number of such programs has tripled, and the number of scholarships awarded has more than doubled from about 175,000 to more than 445,000 (EdChoice 2017). Recent research on statewide private school choice programs in Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio has found those programs have a negative effect on student test scores, at least in the early years of student participation. But little research exists on whether participating in a private school choice program affects long-term outcomes, such as college enrollment and degree attainment. Previous research on the long-term effects of private school choice programs has studied small programs, spanning no more than a single city. This study is the first to examine the impact of a statewide private school choice program on enrollment in and graduation from college. We estimate the effects of the nation’s largest private school choice program, the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) scholarship, on the rates at which students enroll in and graduate from public colleges and universities in Florida. We compare the outcomes of more than 10,000 low-income students who entered the program between 2004 and 2010 with outcomes of students with similar characteristics and test scores who never participated in the FTC program. We find that participating in FTC has substantial positive impacts on the likelihood that students enroll in a public college in Florida. Participation in the FTC program increases college enrollment rates by 6 percentage points, or about 15 percent. Almost all of this effect occurs in community colleges (as opposed to four-year universities), which are more financially accessible to the low-income students participating in FTC and are where most Florida students begin their postsecondary education. We find evidence of larger benefits for students who participate in the program for a greater number of years, with the largest impacts (up to 18 percentage points, a 43 percent increase) for students who spend