Regarding educational attainment, students in grades 7-12 who used LSP scholarships won through lotteries entered college at similar rates to students who did not win scholarship lotteries.

What is the LSP?

The LSP offers publicly funded vouchers to k-12 students from moderate- or low-income families to attend a private school of their choice. To qualify to receive the voucher, students also had to be previously enrolled in low performing public schools, based on the statewide school grading system. Private schools that participate in the program must comply with state government regulations on admissions, financial practices, student mobility, student academic testing, and health and safety standards.

How we did the study.

We estimated the effect of LSP scholarship usage using a lottery-based design, the “gold standard” in research evaluation. The LSP used lotteries to allocate scholarships when more students applied to schools than there were seats available. We leveraged the results of these lotteries to determine how scholarship usage impacted student achievement and the likelihood of enrolling in college.

When estimating the impact of using an LSP scholarship on student achievement our sample included just over 1,600 students in grades 1-5 in the first year of the program. Our sample focusing on college enrollment included just over 1,100 students in grades 7-12 in the first year of the program who were old enough to have graduated from high school and enrolled in college four years later. We used test score data from the Louisiana Department of Education and college enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse.