| The District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act of 2003 was passed by Congress in January 2004. The Act provided funds for District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) improvement activities and charter school facility acquisitions. Most notably, the statute established what is now called the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program—the first federal government initiative to provide K–12 education scholarships, or vouchers, to families to send their children to private schools of choice.
The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program has the following programmatic elements:
- To be eligible, students entering grades K–12 must reside in the District and have a family income at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty line.
- Participating students will receive scholarships of up to $7,500 to cover the costs of tuition, school fees, and transportation to a participating private school of choice.
- Scholarships are renewable for up to 5 years (as funds are appropriated), as long as students remain eligible for the program and remain in good academic standing at the private schools they are attending.
- If there are more eligible applicants than available scholarships or open slots in private schools, applicants are to be awarded scholarships and admission to private schools random selection, for example by lottery.
- Private schools participating in the program must be located in the District, and agree to program requirements regarding nondiscrimination in admissions, fiscal accountability, and cooperation with the evaluation.
The Act requires that this 5-year scholarship program be rigorously evaluated by an independent research team, using the "strongest possible research design for determining the effectiveness" of the program and addressing a specific set of student comparisons and topics (Section 309). The evaluation thus has several components: (1) an impact analysis, comparing outcomes of eligible applicants (students and their parents) from public schools randomly assigned to receive or not receive a scholarship through a lottery, and (2) a performance reporting analysis, comparing all students participating in the scholarship program to students in the same grades in DCPS. All participating students includes those randomly assigned scholarships and those who received scholarships automatically, those who were attending public schools and those attending private schools when they entered the scholarship program. Because DCPS students who did not apply to the scholarship program are likely to be quite different from those who applied and are participating, the impact analysis will be the source of the reliable, causal evidence on program effectiveness called for in the legislation.
U.S. Department of Education Evaluations
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Supplemental Evaluations
- **NEW: Family Reflections on the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program, Final Summary Report,
Thomas Stewart, Ph.D., Patrick Wolf, Ph.D., Stephen Cornman, Esq., MPP, Kenann McKenzie-Thompson, M.Ed., and Jonathan Butcher
- The Muzzled Dog that Didn't Bark: Charters and the Behavioral Response of D.C. Public Schools, Sullivan, Margaret D., Dean B. Campbell, and Brian Kisida
- Second Year Evaluation of the System Effects of the DC Voucher Program, Winters, Marcus A., and Jay P. Greene
- An Evaluation of the Effects of D.C.'s Voucher Program on Public School Achievement and Racial Integration After One Year, Greene, Jay P., and Marcus A. Winters
- Satisfied, Optimistic, Yet Concerned: Parent Voices on the Third Year of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, Stewart, Thomas, Patrick J. Wolf, Stephen Q. Cornman, and Kenann McKenzie-Thompson
- The Evolution of School Choice Consumers: Parent and Student Voices on the Second Year of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, Cornman, Stephen Q., Thomas Stewart, and Patrick J. Wolf
- Parent and Student Voices on the First Year of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, Stewart, Thomas, Patrick J. Wolf, and Stephen Q.Cornman
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Who Chooses, Who Uses? Initial Evidence from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, Wolf, Patrick, Nada Eissa, and Babette Gutmann
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