Several studies predict many positive results from school choice, from increased competition to improved educational outcomes. Attempts to implement school choice, however, interact with a variety of other educational policies and tend to be substantially limited in scope, whether they are means-tested or otherwise limited to a subset of schools, geographic areas, or students. One such attempt to implement school choice the opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) in Washington, D.C. to see how successful policymakers were at instituting the supposed benefits of school choice theory. The approach emphasizes the importance of institutions, examining how the OSP’s attributes and impacted the program’s results. Specifically, I looked schools with effects on knowledge, incentives, and competition. What Is School Choice? Choice is a widely valued aspect of American life. If a consumer wants to buy anything from a new car to a tube of toothpaste, there are numerous brands to choose from at a variety of stores competing on cost, quality, and other factors. Yet, in one of the most important services provided in our country—education—the society seems largely content to delegate choice to the government via the public-school system. While some individuals opt out of the system by sending their children to private or Character schools, most Americans still attend their government-assigned local public schools (Hess 2010). This behavior creates a virtual struggle for public schools, as they receive a fresh group of students every year regardless of school performance as well as affecting their budget. Private and character schools, on the other hand, are like any other private business: they must consistently provide services of a high enough quality to attract customers, or they risk going out of business. In fact, one could argue that they face an even higher performance standard for success than most private businesses, as their main competition is from public schools. Private and character schools do not just need to perform better than public schools; they need to perform significantly better than public schools if they hope to attract parents away from the public alternative and stay in business. In contrast, governments rarely shut down even the worst public schools. Public schools therefore face little incentive to innovate. Individuals of enough means still have some choice under such a system. They take into account the quality of the local public schools when deciding where to live. Such behavior drives up real estate prices in areas with perceived