A Comprehensive Framework For Evaluating Educational Vouchers, WP-005, 2001
Author(s): Henry M. Levin
<Now published in (2002) Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(3), 159-174>
Major policy debates have arisen around the subject of educational vouchers as an alternative for financing and organizing the educational system. To a large degree comparisons between vouchers and the traditional system of educational finance and school operations have been limited to one or two dimensions of education such as the
relative impact of a particular system on achievement test scores. This paper describes a comprehensive, evaluative framework that draws upon a larger range of goals that have been posed for education in a democratic and free society. These criteria include: (1) freedom of choice; (2) productive efficiency; (3) equity; and (4) social cohesion. The
framework demonstrates the importance of and tradeoffs among these four criteria in evaluating specific educational voucher plans and comparing them to other alternatives such as charter schools as well as the more traditional public school arrangement. The paper develops the concept of "advantage maps" for comparative purposes along with a
research agenda for developing fully this approach to evaluation.