Yesterday (April 27), the DOE’s Institute of Education Sciences released their first-year evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, which does not support the professed benefits of voucher programs. (The results might have been more encouraging–at least for the investors–if the IES had evaluated the schools’ profitability instead of their educational effectiveness.) Here’s the IES summation of their findings–
“The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), established in 2004, is the only federally-funded private school voucher program for low-income parents in the United States. This report examines impacts on achievement and other outcomes one year after eligible children were selected or not selected to receive scholarships using a lottery process in 2012, 2013, and 2014. The study found negative impacts on student achievement but positive impacts on parent perceptions of school safety, for those participating in the program. There were no statistically significant effects on parents’ or students’ general satisfaction with their schools or parent involvement in education.”
George McDermott 