An Impact Analysis of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program on Student Achievement

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The North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program provides state-funded private school vouchers worth up to $4,200 to eligible K-12 students. In this presentation, Anna Egalite and Stephen Porter — members of the NC State research team — will discuss their latest research, which involved recruiting 698 students from the public and private school sectors to take a third-party standardized test in spring 2017 so as to estimate the academic impact of the program. They will also explain that a matching approach was used to maximize comparability between the public and private school students in their sample. And finally, Egalite and Porter will explain the results of their research, which uncovered large, positive, statistically significant impacts in math and in language. The research methods, limitations, and policy implications will be discussed.