Last week, several news outlets circulated a report by the U.S. Department of Education’s research division that found negative results for students who participated in the District of Columbia’s Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), the only private school choice program for low-income children in Washington, D.C. Predictably, opponents of school choice descended on the report to tout it as evidence that school choice does not work. But as usual, the devil is in the details, and the bottom line is not what the school choice deniers would have you believe.
First, the report tracked test scores for only one year after students participated in the program. But a recent paper by researchers at the University of Arkansas examining a variety of school choice programs found that the effects of private school vouchers “often start out null in the first one or two years and then turn positive.” And as the authors of the paper rightly point out, “longer-term achievement effects, of course, are much more salient than immediate achievement effects whenever longer-term effects are available.”
The good news—or rather what the detractors of the DC OSP program don’t want you to know — is that we do possess data on these “more salient” longer-term effects. As explained in a recent post by the American Federation for Children:
We know from the previous OSP evaluation (2010) that 91 percent of children who used their opportunity scholarships graduated from high school, 21 percent higher than those who were offered, but did not receive a scholarship. Recent data compiled by the program administrator shows a 2015-2016 graduation rate of 98 percent. 86 percent of these students were accepted into a 2-or-4 year college with 5 percent entering the military or technical school. 6,600 children from low-income families have been awarded scholarships out of nearly 20,000 that have applied since the program began. Parents clearly support the program.
If anything, the demonstrated longer-term effects of the OSP – especially the fact that almost 90 percent of those who participate graduate and go to college – should be solid ground for expanding it. However, despite giving hope of a better education to nearly 7,000 D.C. families and their children, the program remains severely underfunded, especially when compared to the resources allocated for the D.C. public schools.
The program is currently funded at $20 million and the average value of an OSP voucher was $9,472 for the 2016-2017 school year. That is just half of the amount of funding allocated to each public school student. Adding insult to injury, the program is constantly on the verge of being shut down thanks to the intense lobbying efforts of teachers’ unions – which likely discourages many parents from applying because of its political volatility and unreliability.
A second point worth mentioning, highlighted in the Washington Post last week, is that weaker scores among voucher recipients don’t necessarily mean that the D.C. OSP is not working. Martin West, a professor of education at Harvard, states that “weaker scores among voucher recipients may be a result of the fact that public school performance is improving, particularly in the District, where math and reading scores at traditional public and public charter schools have increased quickly over the past decade.”
Data indicate this might indeed be happening – because of school choice. As highlighted in a Forbes article last August, public charter schools in the District of Columbia outperformed traditional public schools in elementary and high school grades. Charters are a basic form of choice within the public system.
All in all, the new study should be taken for what it is: an incomplete picture of the impact that the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is having on the community. It is not, and it should not be used, as an indictment of school choice. In fact, it would be disingenuous to hold the D.C. OSP program to a different standard from that of public schools.
If the detractors of school choice suggest shutting down the program because one report found negative one-year results, they would presumably advocate for shutting down the chronic failing public schools in D.C., for the negative results there are far more numerous and long-term. Of course, this double standard will be ignored by the special interest unions who thrive on a public education monopoly.
When it comes to public schools, the unions’ prescribed cure for poor performance is simply throwing more money at the problem. But if this report teaches us anything, it is that increasing competition in the education arena can incentivize all schools do to better.
That’s even more reason to permanently authorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which is providing a lifeline to thousands of impoverished kids in our nation’s capital every day.
Valerio Martinelli is a senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity.
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