- School Vouchers in the Nation's Capital: Summary of Experimental Impacts
Authors: Patrick Wolf, Babette Gutmann, Michael Puma, Brian Kisida, Lou Rizzo, Nada Eissa
Year: 2011 - Source: School Choice & School Improvement: What have we learned?
Abstract:
The District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act of 2003, passed by the U.S. Congress in January 2004, established the first federally-funded private school voucher program in the United States. The use of a lottery to determine which students would receive scholarships permitted the evaluation team to use a highly rigorous Randomized Control Trial design to evaluate the impacts of the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Three years after random assignment, the members of the experimental treatment group that were offered Opportunity Scholarships were performing about 4.5 scale scores higher in reading as a result, a statistically significant difference that equates to a gain of about 3 months of learning. No differences between the treatment and control groups were detected in math achievement. The parents of treatment students offered scholarships were more satisfied with their child's school after three years than were the parents of students in the control group, and treatment parents viewed their child's school as safer than did control parents. Students, on the other hand, were similar in their views of school satisfaction and safety regardless of whether they were in the scholarship treatment group or the randomized control group.This paper is published in a book from the Harvard Education Press.
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NCSC Project: School Choice and School Improvement - Type of School Choice: vouchers
- Keywords:
student achievement