Cato Institute announced that Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) introduced the SOAR Improvement ACT, otherwise known as H.R. 5181. The purpose of the bill is to increase the funding in the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OPS).
Because Washington, D.C. is not a state, Congress is tasked with funding the schools. The OPS was created in the early 2000s to help low-income parents pay for private school. Three sectors – scholarships, public schools, and public charter school – are given funding from the program, which allots over 17 million for each one.
One of the changes that Foxx put in the bill regards how the money is divided, with the scholarships receiving half of the appropriated funds, meaning that the budget would increase over $26 million.
This new act will also change some aspects of the program, including broadening the standardized tests that are used to evaluate participants, evaluating the program, and simplifying the annual reports by the program administrator. It will also encourage other schools to participate, but only after the school is accredited.
Colleen Hroncich, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, says that currently only about 1% of students are able to access scholarships because of funding.
"In the last school year, there were about 900 students who applied and were turned away because the funding wasn't there. So, that would help quite a bit with getting more kids scholarships," states Hroncich.
She says that the scholarships for K-12 range from $10,000 to $15,000, far less that the $38,000 spent per public school student.
"If you're talking about a program that spends a third to a half of what the public schools are spending and getting similar results, that seems like quite a win for taxpayers and for families," states Hroncich.
Hroncich says increasing the scholarship budget to the proposed $26 million could provide scholarships for 700 additional families.
