Evaluation of the Impact of the DC Choice Program

Contractor: Westat and University of Arkansas

Background/Research Questions:

In 2004 Congress established the first federally funded private school voucher program, with annual funding of about $14 million. The program provides scholarships of up to $7,500 for low-income residents of the District of Columbia to send their children to participating local private schools. The law also mandated that the Department conduct an independent, rigorous impact evaluation of what is now called the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. The evaluation addresses three questions:

• What is the impact of the scholarship program on student academic achievement and other student outcomes? What is the impact of attending private versus public schools?
• What effect does the program have on student and parent perceptions of school safety and satisfaction?
• To what extent is the program influencing schools and expanding choice for parents in Washington, DC?

Design:

The evaluation primarily compares outcomes of approximately 2,300 students randomly assigned by lottery to either receive a scholarship or not receive a scholarship. Lotteries of student applicants took place in spring 2004 (for student enrollment in fall 2004) and spring 2005 (for enrollment in fall 2005). Data are being collected for four follow up years, for students in both the scholarship and non-scholarship groups. The contractor is administering academic assessments, and conducting student, parent, and principal surveys each spring.

Duration: 6.5 years (July 2004–January 2011)

Current Status:

Two descriptive reports and two impact reports have been published so far (see http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/) and analysis of impacts after three years is underway. The final, fourth round of follow up data will be collected in spring 2009, with a final summative report in 2010.

Key Findings

• Overall, being offered a scholarship had no statistically significant impact on reading or math achievement after either one or two years.
• Receiving a scholarship may have improved year 2 reading test scores among three subgroups of students: those who had not attended a School in Need of Improvement (SINI) when they applied to the program, those who had relatively higher pre-program academic performance, and those who applied in the first year of program implementation. However, these findings may be due to chance.
• The program had a positive impact on parent, but not student, satisfaction and perceptions of school safety.
• This same pattern of findings holds when the analysis is conducted to determine the impact of using rather than being offered a scholarship and when estimating the effects of attending private school versus public school, regardless of whether an Opportunity Scholarship Program scholarship was used.