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The Florida Department of Education retained Professor Rick Feiock, Program Director, Askew School of Public Administration & Policy, Florida State University, to evaluate the A+OSP program. Professor Feiock contracted with Jay P. Greene, Senior Fellow, the Manhattan Institute, and others to conduct the evaluation. The report, “An Evaluation of the Florida A-Plus Accountability and School Choice Program,” authored by Greene, was issued in February 2001.
The report found that the threat of vouchers compelled schools faced with the threat of vouchers to work towards the improvement of student achievement. The author concluded, “This report shows that the performance of students on academic tests improves when public schools are faced with the prospect that their students will receive vouchers...”
A subsequent evaluation, released in August 2003, confirmed the results of the 2001 report. It found that "low-performing schools facing a greater degree of threat from voucher competition made better improvements than low-performing schools facing a lesser degree of threat from vouchers."
The Manhattan Institute conducted the first empirical evaluation of the McKay Scholarships Program, which it published in June 2003. Based on an analysis of a telephone survey of both current and former participants in the McKay Scholarships Program, the study found that "...the schools students attend through the McKay program outperform the public schools they previously attended both in terms of parental satisfaction and on a variety of objective measurements."
Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster, "Vouchers for Special Education Students: An Evaluation of Florida's McKay Scholarship Program," Manhattan Institute, June 2003.
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