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Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Impacts After Two Years

NCES 2009-4023
June 2008

DC Opportunity Scholarship Program

In interpreting the impacts of the OSP, it is useful to examine the characteristics of the private schools that participate in the Program and the extent to which students offered scholarships (the treatment group) moved into and out of them during the first 2 years.

School Participation

The private schools participating in the OSP represent the choice set available to parents whose children received scholarships. That group of schools had mostly stabilized by the 2005-06 school year. The schools that offered the most slots to OSP students, and in which OSP students and the impact sample’s treatment group were clustered, have characteristics that differed somewhat from the average participating OSP school. Only 11.2 percent of treatment group students were attending a school that charged tuition above the statutory cap of $7,500 during their second year in the Program (table 2) even though 39 percent and 38 percent of participating schools charged tuitions above that cap in 2005-06 and 2006-07, respectively.4 Although 55 percent of all participating schools were faith-based (35 percent were part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington), nearly 80 percent of the treatment group attended a faith-based school, with more than half of them (53 percent) attending the 23 participating Catholic parochial schools. The average OSP student in the treatment group attended a school with 196 students—somewhat smaller than the average of 236 (2005-06) and 242 (2006-07) students across the set of all participating OSP schools.

While the characteristics of the participating private schools are important considerations for parents, in many respects it is how the schools differ from the public school options available to them that matters most. In the second year after applying to the OSP, students in the treatment and control groups did not differ significantly regarding the proportion attending schools that offered computer labs (93 and 92 percent), libraries (83 and 87 percent), gyms (70 and 66 percent), and art programs (90 and 86 percent). Differences in school characteristics between the treatment and control groups 2 years after they applied to the OSP that were statistically significant at the .01 level included:

  • Students in the treatment group were more likely to attend schools that offered a music program (92 percent), an after-school program (97 percent), and special programs for advanced learners (45 percent) compared to students in the control group (84 percent, 94 percent, and 33 percent for each type of program, respectively).
  • Students in the treatment group were less likely to attend a school that offered counselors (74 percent), tutors (63 percent), programs for non-English speakers (19 percent), and programs for students with learning problems (55 percent) than were students in the control group (89 percent, 73 percent, 50 percent, and 79 percent, respectively, for each offering).

Student Participation

As has been true in similar programs, not all students offered an OSP scholarship actually used it to enroll in a private school. For students assigned to the treatment group, during the first 2 years of the Program (Figure 1):

  • 26 percent (366 out of 1,387) of those offered an OSP scholarship never used it;
  • 20 percent (271) used their scholarship during some but not all of the first 2 years after the award; and
  • The remaining 54 percent (750 students) used their scholarship consistently for the entire 2 years after the lottery.

The reasons for not using the scholarship varied. The most common reasons cited by parents whose students declined the scholarship and completed surveys were (Figure 2):

  • Lack of available space in the private school they wanted their child to attend (29 percent of these parents);
  • Participating schools did not offer services for their child’s learning or physical disability or other special needs (17 percent of these parents); and
  • Child was accepted into a public charter school (16 percent of these parents).

Students who never used the OSP scholarship offered to them, or who did not use the scholarship consistently, could have found their way into other (non-OSP-participating) private schools, public charter schools, or traditional DC public schools. The same alternatives were available to students who applied to the OSP but were never offered a scholarship (the impact sample’s control group). Both the treatment and control groups moved between public (both traditional and charter) and private schools or between SINI and non-SINI schools. As a result, over the 2 years after they applied to the OSP:

  • Among the treatment group, 4 percent remained in the same school they were in when they applied to the Program; 71 percent switched schools once; and 25 percent switched schools twice.
  • Among the control group, 22 percent remained in the same school they were in when they applied to the Program; 57 percent switched schools once; and 21 percent switched schools twice.

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3 Stanford Abbreviated Achievement Test (Form S), Ninth Edition. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Educational Measurement, Harcourt Assessment, Inc., 1997.