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Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Second Year Report on Participation
NCEE 2006-4003
April 2006

Summary of Key Findings on Program Participation

Over the first 18 months of implementation that ended September 2005, applications were accepted in essentially two waves: in spring 2004 for fall 2004 enrollment, which we call "cohort 1," and through spring 2005 for fall 2005 enrollment, which we call "cohort 2." A total of 5,818 students applied, and 4,047 of them were deemed eligible for the OSP. By fall 2005, 2,454 students had been awarded scholarships, most by lottery because they were in grades for which there were more applicants than slots in participating private schools (table 1-1).

In addition:

  • Private Schools. Ten new schools agreed to participate in the Program in the second year of operation, raising the total from 58 who signed on in the first year to 68 in fall 2005. The new schools tend to have smaller class sizes, higher regular tuitions, and smaller minority populations and are less likely to be Catholic-affiliated than the population of schools that have participated in the OSP from the start (table 2-1). Of the 68 schools participating in year 2, 60 were serving scholarship students in fall 2005. The remaining eight schools had no OSP students in fall 2005. Although systematic data were not collected as to the reason(s) each school did not serve OSP students, program implementation staff reported that the most common reasons include that schools either: (1) determined that none of the current scholarship recipients met their entrance criteria, (2) had no scholarship recipients choose their school during the placement phase, or (3) filled their vacant slots before OSP recipients could be placed. [section 2]


  • Background of Applicants. About 44 percent of total public school applicants to the Program came from a public school that was designated as SINI between 2003 and 2005. Eleven percent came from the worst performing public schools, those in which the percentage of students who reached the "proficient" benchmark on the DCPS assessment placed them in the bottom quartile of all DCPS schools. On the other hand, almost one-quarter of all applicants are from the highest performing (top quartile of) DCPS schools based on proficiency rates. [section 3]


  • Impact Sample. A large subset of applicants during the first 2 years—2,308—were public school students who applied to be in grades for which there were more applicants than there were slots in participating private schools. Thus, a lottery determined whether they received a scholarship offer. These students were randomly assigned such that 1,387 received scholarships (treatment group) and 921 did not receive scholarships (the control group). They make up the "impact sample." Preliminary power analyses indicate that the impact sample is sufficient in number for the evaluation to be able to statistically detect meaningful and policy relevant differences in subsequent outcomes between the two groups. [section 3]


  • Characteristics of Treatment vs. Control Groups. The treatment and control groups are statistically similar on all but 2 out of 15 important baseline characteristics that could be measured (table 3-5). In year 2, for students entering grades K–5, the average family income and years of mother's education are somewhat higher for the control group than for the treatment group. These differences are small and likely due to random chance, particularly since multiple small-scale lotteries were run for each grade band during year 2 in order to accommodate early and late applicants.8 In estimating Program impacts, the evaluation will use baseline measures of student background factors to control for these pre-Program differences. [section 3]


  • Scholarship Use Rates. Overall, 1,824 (74 percent) students who were awarded scholarships used them the initial year to attend a private school, although the rate was slightly lower for the impact sample of randomized public school applicants (71 percent or 982 students). Lower use among the impact sample reflects 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. Among cohort 1 students, there is an 8 percentage point decline in use between the first and second years of scholarship award for both the overall and impact sample groups. Taking these use patterns into account, in September 2005, a total of 1,716 students were enrolled in private schools of their parent's choosing by way of Opportunity Scholarships. [section 3]


8 The smaller the number of students randomized at any time, the higher the odds of obtaining some statistical differences between the treatment and control groups.