DC Parental Choice

Yesterday the Senate passed the $410 billion spending bill that included within it language that severely threatens the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. Written by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the bill funds the program for one year beyond its original scope but requires that future appropriations be contingent on Congressional reauthorization and approval of the DC city council. I watched a little CSPAN (for the first time in my life) yesterday and saw Durbin defend the move by claiming that he just wants to be sure the program works before dedicating more money to it. Now that the spending bill has passed with Durbin's language intact, the DC OSP will have to be reauthorized by Congress, which will draw more attention than ever to research on parental choice programs. Because parents who are able to choose schools for their kids often choose Catholic schools, the research surrounding urban Catholic schools will come under scrutiny in the coming weeks as well.

Watching Durbin and Senator Mike Ensign of Nevada debate the research prompted me to reread the study by Wolf et al. (2008) that evaluated the DC program after its first two years. My understanding is that the evaluation of the third year of the program is complete and will be released later this year, but in the meantime, this study is how we’ll need to assess the value of the program in terms of educational achievement.

Generally only one line of this study is paraphrased in mainstream news outlets:

“Overall, the primary analysis indicated there were no statistically significant general impacts of the Program on reading or math achievement after 2 years. That is, the ITT analysis indicates that the outcome test scores of the treatment group as a whole, on average, were not significantly different from those of the control group as a whole in the second year (table 3-2)” (p. 34).

This is followed a few pages later by the claim that “The offer of a scholarship, and therefore also the use of a scholarship, did not appear to have an impact on academic achievement in the second year for most of the subgroups of students examined (table 3-3)” (p. 36).

This raises an important question, because 26% of the kids offered scholarships did not use them. Can we really lump kids who were offered scholarships with the kids who used them?

Regardless, there are some findings in the study that haven’t been much reported in the mainstream news media:

· Lots of kids are learning. Three subgroups, which comprise 88% of the students in the study, demonstrated statistically significant achievement gains in reading (p. 37).

· Parents are satisfied. OSP parents are more highly satisfied with their children’s schools than parents whose children remained in DCPS schools (p. 45).

· Parents feel safer. Parents believe their children’s new schools are significantly less dangerous. (p. 41).

· OSP students enjoy improved school conditions. OSP students attend schools that are smaller, have smaller class sizes, and are better racially integrated than the schools (p. 58).

Also, the same group issued a report on family satisfaction in January 2009. There are two findings here that jumped out at me and are worth discussing:

· Parents are empowered. Parents report taking an active role in their children’s educational lives and they see the OSP as providing a means for their family to break the cycle of poverty (pg. 49).

· Low-income Latinos are particularly satisfied with the program. They believe their children are more motivated, more focused, and working harder than they did in their previous schools (p. 32).

Finally, I’ve been thinking about the financial side of this. This program seems like a bargain. Consider: The Census Bureau reports that, in 2005-06, the District of Columbia spent nearly $13,500 per student in DC Public Schools (pg. xii). The OSP is federally-funded and costs, on average, only $5,000 per child. So for every kid that leaves the DCPS and takes an OSP scholarship, the District seems to save money.

No wonder Michelle Rhee isn’t opposed to this program – absorbing 1,700 kids is going to cost her schools a ton of money. I just don’t understand why the mayor is staying so silent on this – especially when parents are applying to the program at a rate of 4 applicants for every scholarship.