Scholarship Usage

A large portion of the applicant pool and the impact sample received scholarships through the lotteries. These students are expected to use the funds to attend a participating private school of their choice. However, Opportunity Scholarship usage rates have varied by cohort, participant sample, and over time (table 3-6):

• Nearly three-quarters of OSP recipients use the scholarship the first year the students receive them. These initial usage rates are in the mid to high-range of usage rates reported by previous school voucher studies.²¹



• The impact sample overall has a slightly lower rate of initial use (71 percent), which can be attributed to two factors: (1) the group excludes students already attending private schools at the time of application, whose use rates are substantially higher than those for public school recipients and (2) the sample includes a higher proportion of older students, a group that was more constrained in their choice of schools under the Program and who experienced substantially lower use rates.



• Program attrition has been modest for cohort 1 students who initially used their scholarships. About 3 percent of the OSP recipient sample and 5 percent of the impact sample left the Program during the academic year after having initially used a scholarship to attend a private school in fall of 2004. Another 5 and 3 percent, respectively, left the Program during the transition to their second year. Thus, in cohort 1, a total of 64 percent of the OSP recipient sample and half of the impact sample have used their scholarships continuously since fall of 2004.

As noted above, scholarship usage rates also are associated with the type of school the scholarship recipients previously attended and the grade they are entering. Across both cohorts, initial use of scholarships was lowest among students from SINI schools (69 percent) and, not surprisingly, highest for students who were already attending private schools when they applied for a scholarship (88 percent) (table 3-7). Scholarship usage rates differed even more based on grade band. Initial usage was highest among students entering K–5 (79 percent), somewhat lower among students entering 6–8 (69 percent) and lowest among students entering 9–12 (51 percent).

Scholarship usage rates are important to the evaluation of a policy intervention for two reasons. First, usage rates send an initial signal regarding the level of enthusiasm of clients toward the program and their ability to navigate the steps necessary for their children to make use of the program. Second, one of the impact questions the evaluation is designed to address is "what is the impact of actually attending a private school via a scholarship program?" When program usage and persistence rates are relatively high, the approach for determining program efficacy can more clearly stem from the randomly assigned groups of students. The lower the rates of use, the more the evaluators have to deviate from the random assignment and the greater the potential for inaccurate estimates. That important issue and the other central research questions associated with this evaluation will be addressed with initial outcome data in the next report to Congress.