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(This measure has not been amended since it was reported to the House on April 25, 2016. The summary of that version is repeated here.)
Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Reauthorization Act or the SOAR Reauthorization Act
(Sec. 2) This bill repeals the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program School Certification Requirements Act, as contained in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016.
(Sec. 3) The Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act (SOAR) is amended to limit its focus to students in the lowest-performing Washington, DC, elementary and secondary schools.
(Sec. 4) The Department of Education (ED) shall not limit the number of eligible students receiving Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) scholarships, or prevent otherwise eligible students from participating in the OSP because of:
the type of school the student previously attended;
(Sec. 5) An eligible nonprofit organization's application for an OSP grant must include how it will ensure:
the financial viability of a participating school in which 85% or more of enrolled students receive and use an opportunity scholarship,
(Sec. 6) Priorities for the award of scholarships are modified to give priority to:
students who in the preceding school year attended a low-achieving elementary or secondary school, and
(Sec. 7) OSP-participating schools must:
ensure that participating students are taught core subject matter by a teacher with a baccalaureate or equivalent degree,
Participating private schools must be provisionally or fully accredited or in the process of seeking accreditation.
ED must make OSP funds available to eligible entities receiving a grant for administrative expenses and parental education and assistance.
Apr 29, 2016Each bar: ✓ Yea from the bottom, ✕ Nay aboveApr 29, 2016
House Apr 29, 2016 · the primary vote
Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Reauthorization Act
Passed
224 Yea 181 Nay 28 not voting
Party-line vote 10 of 405 voting members broke with their own party: 2 Democrats, 8 Republicans.
DemocratsRepublicansFilled: YeaRing: NayGrey: not voting or present
433 members on this roll call, from the official House record. Party majorities need at least five voting members, so an independent never counts as breaking with a party.
Signing on is not a vote: a member can cosponsor H.R. 4901 and vote against it. 12 signed when it was filed.
Previously unobligated OSP funds must be used for additional scholarships (95%) and administrative expenses (5%).
(Sec. 8) The bill revises current OSP evaluation procedures.
ED shall ensure that evaluation of the OSP is conducted using an acceptable quasi-experimental research design for determining the effectiveness of the opportunity scholarship program under this division that does not use a control study group consisting of students who applied for but did not receive opportunity scholarships.
The bill revises the duties of the ED Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) to repeal the requirement for a grade appropriate, nationally norm-referenced standardized test each school year to assess participating eligible students. IES shall instead assess participating eligible students who use an opportunity scholarship in each of grades 3 through 8, as well as one of the high school level grades, by supervising the administration of a specified reading and mathematics assessment used by the DC public schools.
The issues to be assessed shall exclude OSP success in increasing parental involvement of such parents in the education of their children, but include:
a comparison of the academic achievement of participating eligible students who use an opportunity scholarship to the academic achievement of a comparison group of students with similar backgrounds in the DC public schools (instead of the academic growth and achievement of the eligible students in the same grades who sought to participate in the OSP but were not selected); a comparison of the college enrollment rates, college persistence rates, and college graduation rates of students who participated in the program in specified years as the result of winning the OSP lottery with the enrollment, persistence, and graduation rates for students who entered but did not win the lottery in those years and who, as a result, served as the control group for previous evaluations of the program; as well as an assessment of student academic achievement at participating schools in which 85% of the total number of students enrolled at the school are participating eligible students who receive and use an opportunity scholarship. The prohibition against any disclosure of personally identifiable information shall be replaced with specified requirements for such a disclosure.
(Sec. 9) The specified authorized OSP funds that ED may withhold for noncompliance with SOAR requirements shall be differentiated based on whether the noncompliance relates to the DC public schools, to the DC public charter schools, or to both.
Funds provided under this Act to support DC public charter schools may be directed to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education for transfer to subgrantee public charter schools or networks of such schools, or DC-based non-profit organizations with successful experience with them.
(Sec. 10) ED and the Mayor shall revise a specified memorandum of understanding to ensure that participating schools meet fire code standards and maintain certificates of occupancy.
(Sec. 12) The bill reauthorizes the OSP through FY2021.
Written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, describing H.R. 4901 as passed House without amendment on Apr 29, 2016. It is not the text of the measure; a later amendment may have changed what it does.
Organizations that named H.R. 4901 in a lobbying disclosure. Only those that cited the bill by number appear, so this is a floor, not a full list.
28 disclosures name this measure. Retrieved from LDA.gov on 2026-10-05. Senate Office of Public Records cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from LDA.gov.