A Harvard University study finds African American students in Dayton, Ohio, Washington, and New York City who are using privately funded vouchers that allow them to attend private schools are showing academic improvement in mathematics and reading in just two years, compared with their public school peers.

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research released a similar study that finds Charlotte, N.C., students who used vouchers increased their standardized test scores by 6 percent in math and 7 percent in reading during a one-year period. But even when considering this positive evidence, skeptics say the message is biased in favor of school vouchers, Education Week reports.

"One of the strengths of these studies seems to be the form of randomized selection they used," stated John Jennings, director of the Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG). "But they pushed the most favorable findings into the headlines and put the negative aspects in the footnotes."

A bipartisan panel convened by Harvard’s Center on Education Policy -- a staunch supporter of traditional public education -- concluded no studies or groups of studies providing conclusive evidence that vouchers are an effective way to boost academic achievement or improve education, EW reports.

Kathleen Lyons, a spokeswoman for the National Education Association, says the PEPG study is "biased" and "incomplete," and that researchers are overstating the results. Lyons says some of the problems with the studies include authors not factoring in the difference between public school students who applied for vouchers and those who did not, and that the study does not account for dropout rates, the magazine reports.

Jay Greene, author of the Manhattan Institute report, says the studies are well designed and that the voucher programs provide significant academic benefits to their participants.

Paul Peterson, lead researcher of the Harvard PEPG study, says one reason African-American students seem to benefit more from voucher programs than other ethnic groups is the quality -- or lack thereof -- of the public schools the voucher recipients attended before enrolling in a private school, the magazine reports.

The Charlotte reports does not break down voucher recipients by race, but the majority of students in voucher programs are African-American. Researchers in both studies were able to compare students who received scholarships with those who did not. Each of the four programs awarded the vouchers by lottery, EW reports.

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