The U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has awarded a 10-month contract to Westat to provide technical support to the program operator of the D.C. Choice Incentive Program. The program, a $14 million, five-year demonstration initiative, is the first federally funded program in the nation to provide "equal opportunity scholarships" to low-income students in the district to attend parochial or private schools.

Westat, in collaboration with Georgetown University and Chesapeake Research Associates, will assist the Washington Scholarship Fund on the design and execution of the lottery that will be used to randomly assign scholarships to eligible student applicants.

On March 24, Secretary Paige joined D.C. Mayor Williams and other D.C. government officials to announce that the Washington Scholarship Fund had been selected to administer the program.

The contractor will conduct the following activities:

• Design and monitor the random assignment process
• Collect achievement data and other school data on students
• Prepare a report to Congress on the characteristics of the applicants
• Prepare data files for the comprehensive evaluation

A second contract will be awarded by the IES to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the D.C. Scholarship Program, and the IES expects to conduct the competition for the evaluation this spring and award the contract in June.

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