From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: District of Columbia’s School Voucher Program

Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with George Scott, Director,
Education Workforce and Income Security

Related GAO Work: GAO-13-805: District of Columbia Opportunity 
Scholarship Program: Actions Needed to Address Weaknesses in 
Administration and Oversight

Released: November 2013

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[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's October
2013. The District of Columbia's Opportunity Scholarship Program has
garnered national attention as the first federally funded voucher
program, providing students with public funds to attend private schools.
A team led by George Scott, a director in GAO's Education, Workforce,
and Income Security team, recently examined the oversight and
administration of the program. GAO's Sarah Kaczmarek sat down with
George to talk about what they found.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Your team went out and talked with school officials
and parents, can you talk about that?

[ George Scott: ] Certainly. Well, as you know, the DC Scholarship
Opportunity Program provides thoroughly funded scholarships to
low-income residents of the District of Columbia for their kids to
attend a school of their parent's choice. As part of our study of this
program, the team did have an opportunity to go out and actually visit
ten schools. In addition to visiting the schools, we also had an
opportunity to conduct some discussions group with a group of parents,
and generally what we heard from the parents is overall they were very
pleased with the program. It allowed them to select schools. They felt
these schools were safer, more secure environment for their children,
but they also raised some issues concerning the—the kinds of information
they had received from the program, as well as the timing of when
scholarships were awarded.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] In talking with the parents, did you find that
families are getting the information they need to make informed school
choices?

[ George Scott: ] Well, generally, what we heard from parents, and this
was, you know, we also followed up with some additional information and
reviews ourselves, is the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust
Corporation which is the, the corporation that actually administers the
program. They provide parents with a wide range of information. However,
what we heard from parents is that in some cases they did not either
receive, for example, the school directory, which provides a list of
schools and key information, and we also found that in some cases the
directories were incomplete. For example, not providing a full range of
information on the, the types of, of school fees, tuitions, and we felt
that there are opportunities for the DC Children and Youth Investment
Trust to improve that school directory.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Well let me ask you then, how well is this program
being overseen?

[ George Scott: ] From our perspective, there's clearly room for
improvement. Particularly in the area of internal controls, we felt that
the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust did not have effective
internal controls and oversight of the program, and, particularly, we
also take issue with the amount of oversight the Department of Education
is providing of the trust.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] What's GAO recommending then in this report?

[ George Scott: ] We’re making a number of recommendations to the
Department of Education to improve its oversight and provide additional
assistance to the Trust to administer the program, such as, once again,
you know, focusing on the school directory to make sure it's timely and
complete, focusing on the timing of when scholarships are awarded to
ensure that parents sort of know far enough in advance they can make an
informed choice about which schools they will be able to attend, and
that the department also provide additional technical assistance to the
trust to help improve that—their database which they use to manage the
program.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Finally, for taxpayers concerned with school
vouchers, what's the bottom line here?

[ George Scott: ] I think the important thing to remember is this study
wasn't about school vouchers, in general, it was specifically about the
administration and oversight of the DC Scholarship Opportunity Program.
That said, I think our lesson learned here is regardless of the program,
it is really important that there be effective oversight administration
to account for federal dollars.

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[ Narrator: ] To learn more visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the
next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the Congressional
Watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.