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By Zach Miners
With more families choosing charter schools, the voucher option is losing political favor
Ingrid Campbell's two daughters -- Mercedes, 17, and Madisyn, 9 -- both have federal scholarships, or vouchers, that have allowed them to attend private schools in Washington. She hopes her 3-year-old son also will have access to a voucher when it's time for him to enter kindergarten, but Campbell is not optimistic.
Thousands of D.C. families have found themselves in limbo as Congress debates whether to continue the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first and only federally funded education voucher plan in the country. Since it was enacted in 2004, the $14 million-a-year legislation has given vouchers worth up to $7,500 to more than 3,000 of the city's low-income K-12 students so that they can attend private schools. But the program was signed into law as a five-year pilot initiative when vouchers were the buzzword in school reform. The rise of charter schools, along with recent moves by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, has thrown the future of the OSP -- and the concept of vouchers as a school reform option in general -- into question.
The debate over whether vouchers still make sense for the District's disadvantaged students came to a head last spring when Congress voted to discontinue new funding until the program has been fully reauthorized. That move meant that many of the students who were planning to use vouchers to pay for private schools this academic year would have to attend the low-performing schools in their neighborhoods. Public outcry in the city led Congress to extend the funding so students currently getting vouchers would continue to receive them through high school graduation.
But Congress is still deliberating the overall fate of the option -- and whether new students can enroll in it. Sens. Joe Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut; Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat; Susan Collins, a Maine Republican; and others have introduced legislation to save the program for five additional years, but that legislation has not yet been voted on by either the
"To survive, the program needs both houses to reauthorize it and both houses to fund it, and for the president to sign both," says Andy Smarick of the
When Congress temporarily revoked the funding, about 90 percent of the displaced students landed in public schools that were in need of improvement, corrective action, or restructuring, according to the
Constitutional issues. The debate over whether vouchers still make sense is striking political chords across the country. There are locally funded voucher programs in Ohio, Florida, Utah, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Traditionally, Republicans support vouchers because they say choice puts pressure on neighborhood public schools to improve and vouchers offer options to parents who would otherwise have to send their children to failing schools. But Democrats, teachers unions, and other opponents argue that vouchers prevent public schools from improving by taking dollars away from them.
Vouchers also have raised constitutional issues because some students use them to attend private religious schools. Approximately 20,000 Milwaukee students are in the program this year, and 80 percent of the participating private schools are religious. In 2002, a case involving the Cleveland voucher program went all the way to the
President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appear to be favoring charter schools over vouchers in the requirements school systems have to meet to collect additional funding from the federal government. Duncan has spoken against vouchers, saying that they usually serve only 1 to 2 percent of the students in a community and that the federal government, local governments, and local school districts must be "more ambitious than that."
But some education advocacy and reform groups, citing the $100 billion in education monies appropriated under last year's economic stimulus package, have challenged that argument. They say the voucher program represents but a single drop of water in an ocean of federal spending.
"We have vouchers for cars through the 'cash for clunkers' program," says Jeanne Allen, president of the Washington-based
It is possible for voucher programs and charter schools to coexist. Says Nelson Smith, president of the
In the District of Columbia, there is evidence that the federal voucher program is delivering results. An independent evaluation mandated by the government has revealed that students in the program are making academic gains in reading. (An improvement in math scores was deemed statistically insignificant.) A separate
Students appear to be enthusiastic about the opportunities the OSP has provided them. Mercedes Campbell, a senior at
Parents like Ingrid Campbell say that they will keep putting pressure on lawmakers and President Obama to save D.C.'s vouchers. "My middle child is the one I'm fighting for all the way, because I might have to put her back in public school next year if we lose the vouchers," she says. "I would get two or three jobs to keep her in her private school."
© U.S. News & World Report
Congress Considers Cutting D.C. School Voucher Program | Zach Miners