11. Department of Education · Notable · Needs Congress
Expand the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and move it to HHS
Printed page 326 11. Department of Education
“The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides vouchers to low-income children living in the nation's capital—appropriate as D.C. is under the jurisdiction of Congress—should be expanded into a universal program, formula-funded, and moved to the Department of Health and Human Services.”
What has happened
- Not started
Moved the other way on the transfer element: the D.C. Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act competition is listed in the ED-DOL Elementary and Secondary Education Partnership fact sheet among the programs Labor will administer for ED. Health and Human Services has no role in it.
- Not started
The three D.C. scholarship bills in the 119th Congress would not make the program universal or formula-funded: H.R. 954 and S. 3710 would make the existing authorization permanent, and H.R. 5181, the SOAR Act Improvements Act, was ordered reported by the House Oversight Committee 25-20 on 2025-09-10 and has had no floor action. Under playbook 3b a committee report is not a rung.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Executive Order 14191, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families” (2025-01-29), directs guidance on state-based choice, discretionary-grant priorities, HHS block grants, military families and Bureau of Indian Education schools. It says nothing about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
- The program continues to run at ED: FR notices of 2025-04-23 and 2025-05-02 invited applications for the Opportunity Scholarship Program, and paperwork notices for the DC School Choice Incentive Program ran through 2026-02-17.
- Negative search: Federal Register full text for “Opportunity Scholarship Program” since 2025-01-20 returns five documents, all of them competitions or paperwork notices; no expansion, no formula funding, no HHS transfer.
- Action
- expand
- Object
- D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program
- ID
- 812