The release of the study Thursday gives Democratic lawmakers renewed ammo against the larger-scale voucher proposal. “When Secretary [Betsy] DeVos’s own Department’s independent research office tells her that siphoning taxpayer dollars into private schools has a negative impact on students, it’s time for her to finally abandon her reckless plans to privatize public schools across the country,” Democratic Senator Patty Murray, the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee, said in a statement. Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Education and Workforce committee, said: “We know that these failed programs drain public schools of limited resources, only to deliver broken promises of academic success to parents and students. Congress must end this failed program and support the more than 90 percent of students nationwide who are enrolled in public schools."

DeVos, however, wasn’t discouraged by the latest findings, releasing a statement on Thursday indicating she hadn’t shifted her views after reviewing them. “D.C.’s traditional public schools have not suffered as a result of being part of a system that allows choice,” she said. “Rather, they have greatly improved since the 2004 inception of the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). The study released today found that D.C. OSP parents overwhelmingly support this program, and that, at the same time, these schools need to improve upon how they serve some of D.C.’s most vulnerable students. We should demand excellence from all of our nation’s schools, regardless of their type. This Administration remains committed to fully funding D.C. OSP so that D.C.’s most vulnerable students have access to the widest array of education options possible.”

There’s nothing in the report that supports DeVos’s assertion that parents overwhelmingly support the program. Rather, it found “the program did not have a statistically significant impact on parents’ or students’ general satisfaction with the school the child attended.” The study did produce some positive findings: For example, parents of children who used school vouchers were were more likely to say that their child’s school was safe, and the parents of participating children in sixth grade or higher were more likely than those of nonparticipating children to engage in education-related activities at home. But “overwhelming” support for the voucher program itself was not indicated in the IES report.

Virginia Foxx, the Republican chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, acknowledged in a statement the “disappointing findings in this report,” and argued that the program would need to “step up and deliver the change that is necessary to ensure students excel from day one.” But she also stood by the effectiveness of school choice. “There’s no question improvements need to be made, but in no way should this single report diminish our support for the program or the belief that parents deserve more freedom and choices when it comes to their children’s education,” Foxx said.