Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze? A Benefit/Cost Analysis of the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program

Patrick J. Wolf () and Michael McShane ()
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Patrick J. Wolf: Department of Education Reform, University of Arkansas
Michael McShane: Research Fellow in Education Policy, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC

Education Finance and Policy, 2013, vol. 8, issue 1, 74-99

Abstract: School voucher programs have become a prominent aspect of the education policy landscape in the United States. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is the only federally funded voucher program in the United States. Since 2004 it has offered publicly funded private school vouchers to nearly four thousand students to attend any of seventy-three different private schools in Washington, DC. An official experimental evaluation of the program, sponsored by the federal government's Institute of Education Sciences, found that the students who were awarded Opportunity Scholarships graduated from high school at a rate 12 percentage points higher than the students in the randomized control group. This article estimates the benefit/cost ratio of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, primarily by considering the increased graduation rate that it induced and the estimated positive economic returns to increased educational attainment. We find a benefit to cost ratio of 2.62, or $2.62 in benefits for every dollar spent on the program. © 2013 Association for Education Finance and Policy

Keywords: voucher programs; scholarship programs; DC Opportunity Scholarship Program; District of Columbia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I21 I22 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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