  |
| |
|
Washington Watch: Bush seeks more D.C. voucher money Sept. 21, 2006
With the jury still out on Washington city schools' multimillion-dollar private school voucher experiment, President Bush has asked Congress for $15 million more in his 2007 budget with an additional $100 million for the program to be expanded nationwide. The District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act was passed by Congress in 2004 amid controversy. Many residents and even the district's former school superintendent and congressional delegate opposed the voucher initiative when it was being debated in Congress. According to the People For the American Way Foundation, when the question was put to voters, 76 percent opposed taxpayer-funded vouchers if it meant less money for public school students. In the D.C. program's first year, 1,359 low-income students were awarded vouchers for up to $7,500 to pay for private school tuition and fees. More than 1,600 slots were initially funded by the more than $13 million federal program. By the time the 2003-04 year started, nearly 300 students had dropped out of the program, according to the Washington Post. The following year more students did apply, but the PFAW found the program failed to meet its goal of assisting students from schools in need of improvement. Only 75 students from "failing schools" received vouchers; more than 200 voucher recipients had already been enrolled in private schools, PFAW found. PFAW also found that the organization administering the federal program tried to cover up potential problems, including the fact that private and religious schools participating can administer admissions tests to the voucher students and have the ability to charge more than the $7,500 voucher value. The district's congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, has questioned the program's success. No statistics or test scores have been released, Norton said. Recently, proponents of the program, supposedly intended for low-income students, have sought to raise income limits to allow more students access. Norton and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., called for the Government Accountability Office to study the program's first two years. The voucher program will receive federal funding for at least three more years. National expansion In July, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings supported the proposed $100 million expansion of the voucher program nationwide. This came one week after Spellings' own department concluded that public schools outperform their private counterparts. "Their own evidence doesn't support the waste of funding at a time when the president's own 2006 education budget would underfund No Child Left Behind by more than $13 billion," said NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan Lubin. "Yet they still want to siphon even more for a failed experiment — money that should be put into proven educational programs." For more information, visit www.pfaw.org. NYSUT's national affiliates, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, both oppose legislation diverting money to private and religious schools. Visit www.aft.org or www.nea.org for more information. — Clarisse Butler Banks |
|
| | |