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This article examines the effects of school vouchers on student test scores in New York, New York, Dayton, Ohio, and Washington, DC. The evaluations in all three cities are designed as randomized field trials. The findings, therefore, are not confounded by the self-selection problems that pervade most observational data. After 2 years, African Americans who switched from public to private school gained, relative to their public-school peers, an average of 6.3 National Percentile Ranking points in the three cities on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The gains by city were 4.2 points in New York, 6.5 points in Dayton, and 9.2 points in Washington. Effects for African Americans are statistically significant in all three cities. In no city are statistically significant effects observed for other ethnic groups, after either 1 or 2 years. © 2002 by the Association for Policy Analysis and Management.

The relationship between welfare benefit levels and the residential choices of the poor raises two issues for federalism in the United States. Do state benefit levels affect the residential choices of the poor? Do residential choices of the poor affect the level at which a state sets its benefit levels? Empirical studies have seldom studied the interconnection between these two issues. This research estimates simultaneously the mutual effects of welfare benefits and poverty rates while controlling for other economic and political variables. When benefit levels become high, the size of the poverty population increases. Conversely, when poverty rates become high, benefit levels are cut. The findings are consistent with the claim that state-determined benefit levels distort policy and residential choices.

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