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On January 18, 2006, a new study was released evaluating the initial effects of a federally sponsored scholarship program in Washington D.C. on the opportunities District students have
to attend racially integrated schools and the academic outcomes of the District’s public schools . The report evaluates the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program after its first year of implementation.
The study was conducted by Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters, of the University of Arkansas and the Manhattan Institute,
and was jointly released by the Manhattan Institute and the School Choice Demonstration Project.
The study compares rates of racial integration in D.C.’s public schools and private schools participating in the scholarship program during its first year. The authors find that scholarship-accepting private schools have populations whose
racial demographics more accurately mirror those of the surrounding metropolitan region than do public schools in the District. The study also finds that schools accepting Opportunity Scholarship |
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are less likely to have
enrollments that are 90% or 95% racially homogeneous than are students attending Washington D.C. public schools. For example, the study finds that 85.4% of students enrolled in D.C. public schools attend a school that is 90% or more racially
homogeneous, while 47.3% of students in scholarship accepting private schools attend such segregated schools.
“Our study suggests that the scholarship program will likely lead to low-income students leaving more segregated public schools for better integrated private schools,” explained Dr. Jay Greene.
The authors also evaluate the effect of the policy on the academic performance of District public schools. The study measures whether changes in a public school’s test scores are related to its distance to the nearest scholarship accepting
private school or the number of scholarship schools within a one mile radius of a public school. In theory, public schools with shorter distances to private schools or that have more private schools nearby should face greater competition from
the scholarship program than public schools with fewer educational alternatives nearby.
The evaluation finds that the OSP had no academic effect, positive or negative, on the District’s public schools after its first year. Other studies tend to indicate school choice programs have helped to improve public school performance. The
authors argue that a null finding could be explained by several factors. The program was designed to have a minimal financial impact on public schools, so DCPS should have fewer incentives to respond to the new competition. The program is small,
serving fewer than 1,000 children in a district with more than 70,000 students. In contrast, charter schools serve 15,000 children. Finally, there is a possibility that the null finding might be explained if there were no strong relationship between
scholarships competition and academic performance in Washington D.C public schools.
This report is part of a series of independent, foundation-supported studies of Washington D.C.’s pioneering federal scholarship program. These studies are meant to augment and complement the governmental evaluation of the Opportunity Scholarship Program.
The authors plan to continue evaluating the program in each of the next five years using a variety of approaches. |
