School Vouchers and Student Attainment: Evidence from a State‐Mandated Study of Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program

In this article we examine educational attainment levels for students in Milwaukee's citywide voucher program and a comparable group of public school students. Using unique data collected as part of a state‐mandated evaluation of the program, we consider high school graduation and enrollment in postsecondary institutions for students initially exposed to voucher schools and those in public schools at the same time. We show that exposure to voucher schools was related to graduation and, in particular, to enrollment and persistence in a 4‐year college. These differences are apparent despite controls for student neighborhoods, demographics, early‐career test scores and—for a subsample of survey respondents—controls for parental education, income, religious behavior, and marital status. We conclude by stressing the implications for future scholarship and policy, including the importance of attainment outcomes in educational research.     

The use of an improved pRIA technique in the identification of protein residues

Blood and protein residue identification in archaeological research has been a controversial subject for the last 20 years. This paper reports on the use of an improved protein radioimmunoassay (pRIA) technique in identifying protein residues. Results from the blind testing of the original and improved pRIA techniques in identifying bloodstains on experimental lithic artifacts are described and compared. We argue that the improved pRIA technique is highly sensitive and accurate for identifying protein residues to genus, and thus has excellent applications for archaeological research.