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

Introduction

By fall 2005, the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), the first federally funded voucher program in the United States, was in its second year serving low-income students in the nation's capital. More than 5,800 students have applied to the Program over the 2 years, and about 2,300 of them-eligible public school students who participated in a lottery to determine scholarship award-are the subject of a rigorous impact evaluation mandated by the Program statute. While the most important questions for the evaluation are about the Program's effectiveness in improving student outcomes, data are still being collected for that analysis and will be presented in a 2007 report. This document from the study team provides a brief update to the first report to Congress1 by describing the schools and students who applied to and became participants in the Program for the 2005–06 school year. The analysis indicates that by fall 2005, the Program was operating at capacity, with more than 1,700 students using scholarships at 60 of 68 participating private schools.

1 To access the first evaluation report, see http://www.ed.gov/ies/ncee.