The Effects of the Louisiana Scholarship Program on Student Achievement After Three Years

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Abstract

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a statewide voucher program targeted to low-income students in low-performing schools. This paper uses oversubscription lotteries for nearly 10,000 eligible applicants to estimate how LSP scholarship usage has impacted student achievement after three years. Large negative achievement effects in the first year of the program appear to have been followed by improvement in the second and third years. For our primary analytic sample, the effects of the LSP on English Language Arts (ELA) are positive and math are negative in Year 3, but neither is statistically significant. Subgroup analyses indicate significant positive ELA effects for the lowest performing students at baseline and significant negative math effects for students applying to the earlier elementary grades.

Authors

• Jonathan N Mills, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

• Patrick J. Wolf, University of Arkansas