Hilary Shelton of the NAACP speaks against the DC voucher. He is joined by Tanya Clay House, then representing PFAW, and the Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United.

Hilary Shelton of the NAACP speaks against the DC voucher. He is joined by Tanya Clay House, then representing PFAW, and the Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United.

The DC Voucher

Over the last two decades, the DC private school voucher program has cost federal taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, despite being ineffective, unaccountable, and poorly managed. 

The DC voucher, which is the only federally funded voucher program in the country, authorizes $20 million per year to fund tuition at private schools in Washington, DC. But study after study shows that the DC voucher program is a failure. The program fails its most basic goal: improving educational opportunities for students, who perform worse than their peers who don’t receive a voucher. Serious accountability and quality control issues plague the program. And the DC voucher endangers students’ civil rights, since the private schools participating in the program do not abide by all federal nondiscrimination protections and civil rights laws despite getting taxpayer funds.

A program with these problems shouldn’t continue. Even worse–since the DC voucher is funded by Congress, everyone’s taxpayer dollars, no matter where they live in the United States, are paying for this. Congress should end the DC voucher program now, and keep public money in public schools. 

History

Congress forced the DC voucher program, formally named the Opportunity Scholarship Program, on the people of the District in 2003 as a five-year pilot program. Because the program lacked support, supporters of the program sneaked it into an omnibus appropriations bill that Congress had to pass in order to avoid a federal government shut-down.

In 2009, due to its lack of success, Congress moved to end the program: it allowed those students in the program to continue using a voucher, but prohibited new students from entering the program. Then in 2011, despite several studies demonstrating that the program is a failure, Congress reversed itself and passed the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act, expanding the program and reauthorizing it through 2016.

In 2017, Members of the House began pushing to renew the program once again through the SOAR Reauthorization Act (H.R. 1387). The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a markup of the bill on March 8. The committee rejected three amendments—one to strengthen the evaluation process, one to require private schools that take vouchers to adhere to federal civil rights protections for students with disabilities, and one to protect LGBTQ students from discrimination. It then adopted the bill by voice vote.

The bill never made it to the House floor for a vote. Instead, a provision reauthorizing the DC voucher program was added to the spending bill.

The SOAR Act was once again reauthorized in 2019 through an appropriations bill. Although the House legislation would have included language requiring schools in the voucher program to provide students with the same civil rights protections and rights and protections under IDEA as students in public schools, the final bill did not include this language. Both the Fiscal Year 2023 and Fiscal Year 2024 bills reauthorized the program and the House is proposing a $1 million increase for Fiscal Year 2025.

“The inclusion of the measure in the omnibus spending package means voucher opponents have virtually no options for opposing it. ”
— The Baptist News Global (2003)

““The D.C. voucher program fails to offer D.C. students better educational resources, greater opportunities for academic achievement, or adequate accountability to taxpayers. For these reasons and more, we oppose the reauthorization and any expansion of the D.C. voucher program.” ”
— 2017 Letter from NCPE Members

Local Opposition

“It is disturbing that over 80% of the students with vouchers attend schools that operate outside the non-discrimination provisions of the D.C. Human Rights Act.”
— David Grosso, Chairman, DC City Council Committee on Education

Studies

U.S. Department of Education Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (2019)

U.S. Department of Education Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (2018)

U.S. Department of Education Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (2017)

U.S. Department of Education Study of Applicants & Participating Schools  (2014)  

US Government Accountability Office Study  (2013)          

U.S. Department of Education Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Final Report (2010)

“The OSP had a statistically significant negative impact on mathematics achievement after
two years. ”
— 2018 Department of Education Report
“Many of the schools were not accredited, and there is no evidence they submitted evidence of educational soundness.”
— 2007 Report by the US Government Accountability Office

“But a Washington Post review found that hundreds of students use their voucher dollars to attend schools that are unaccredited or are in unconventional settings, such as a family-run K-12 school operating out of a storefront, a Nation of Islam school based in a converted Deanwood residence, and a school built around the philosophy of a Bulgarian psychotherapist.

”
— The Washington Post

AdditionAl Resources

Program Fact Sheet

Myths Debunked

2015 Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Hearing on the DC Voucher Transcript

2009 Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing on the DC Voucher Transcript:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4