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Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) today released a report, "Evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program: Impacts After Two Years," reaffirming parental satisfaction and academic gains among the scholarship participants.

Reading achievement improved for three large subgroups of students, comprising 88 percent of participating students. In fact, their gains put them about two to four months ahead of their peers who did not receive a scholarship. While the report found no statistically significant difference in test scores overall between students who were offered a scholarship and students who were not offered a scholarship, achievement trends are moving in the right direction. The positive effects found in this year's report are larger than those in last year's report, and whenever statistically significant effects were found, they favored students who were offered scholarships.

"The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is a lifeline of hope and opportunity for these low-income students who are striving for a better future for themselves and their families," said U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. "The academic gains indicated in the report show that students have chosen to work hard, and their families have chosen to make the commitment to support them in their new schools. While it reflects the reality that this program is still in its early stages, this report also tells me that no one in a position of responsibility can sever this lifeline right now and leave these kids adrift in schools that are not measuring up-not when they have chosen to create a better future for themselves."

The program allows low-income families in our nation's capital to ensure their children receive the quality education they deserve. In 2008, these families received $14.8 million in scholarships to cover tuition, fees and transportation expenses to attend the participating private elementary or secondary school of their choice. Today's report found a high degree of parental satisfaction with the students' new schools. If Congress were to discontinue funding for the program and scholarship recipients were forced to return to D.C. public schools, 86 percent of those students would be attending schools that did not meet "adequate yearly progress" in 2006-2007.

The report studies five key outcomes of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program: school differences; academic achievement; parental perceptions of school satisfaction and safety; student reports of school satisfaction and safety; and the impact of using a scholarship.

For more information about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, please visit http://www.ed.gov/programs/dcchoice/index.html. To read today's report, please visit http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20084023.asp.

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