House narrowly passes D.C. voucher bill
9/23/03 -- The House of Representatives passed voucher legislation for the District of Columbia Sept. 9 by a single vote, 209 to 208.
The voucher amendment, approved as part of an appropriations bill for the District of Columbia, would provide $10 million to help the parents of low-income children in Washington, D.C., public schools pay for tuition at private schools.
If passed by Congress, it would be the first federally funded private school voucher program in the nation.
NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant expressed "disappointment" in the House's "narrow vote to divert millions of taxpayer dollars from public schools to private school vouchers."
NSBA, along with its Federal Relations Network and local school board leaders, urged members of Congress to oppose the voucher amendment.
The House Appropriations Committee earlier had shifted $10 million out of the appropriations bill for the Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments, which funds all federal K-12 programs, and transferred it to the D.C. appropriations bill (H.R.2765) to fund the voucher program.
The full Senate is expected to take up a D.C. appropriations bill within the next few weeks. NSBA is calling upon local school board members to urge their senators to reject vouchers as part of that bill (S.1583).
Under the House bill, vouchers, termed "opportunity scholarships," would be worth up to $7,500. They would be restricted to children in families earning up to 185 percent of the poverty limit. That would come to $34,000 for a family of four.
The program would serve approximately 1,300 of the city's students. About 68,000 students are enrolled in D.C. public schools, and another 12,000 attend public charter schools.
Marc Egan, director of NSBA's Voucher Strategy Center, says vouchers contradict the accountability standards in the No Child Left Behind Act.
While public schools must comply with NCLB reforms on the hiring of highly qualified teachers, annual testing, and public reporting on student performance disaggregated by student sub-groups, Egan says, "these basic accountability standards are not required of private schools accepting the federally funded vouchers. That creates a double standard regarding federal funding of education."
"The federal government is demanding more of our public schools than ever before," says Bryant, "and while our schools are up to the challenge, it is imperative that Congress lives up to its own obligations and fully fund the mandates it has placed on our public schools."
A scramble for votes
The voucher amendment, proposed by Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), was first taken up on the House floor Sept. 5. The House approved the Davis amendment by a razor-thin majority, 205 to 203.
Following the vote, Rep. Tom Osborne (R-Neb.) announced that he had mistakenly voted for the Davis amendment but actually opposed it. Rep. Robert R. Simmons (R-Conn.) said he was heading to the floor to vote against the Davis amendment but did not get there until after the voting was closed.
The House then took up an amendment by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), supported by NSBA, that would have eliminated the $10 million earmarked for the voucher program.
That amendment failed on a tie vote of 203 to 203. Norton is D.C.'s non-voting representative in Congress, and if she had been able to vote on her own amendment, it would have passed.
Under parliamentary procedures, a re-vote on the Davis amendment was called for.
Faced with the possibility that it might fail the second time, the House leadership pulled the bill from the floor and rescheduled the vote for Sept. 9 at 8 p.m., the same time as a debate for Democratic presidential candidates in Baltimore sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. Several Democratic House members had been scheduled to appear at the debate.
The House leadership kept the voting open until they had enough votes to ensure that the measure would pass. The voting was only supposed to be open for 15 minutes, and the measure narrowly trailed at that point.
House leaders kept the voting open for an extra 25 minutes until two more members entered the chamber to support the amendment. It then passed by a vote of 209 to 208.
"We are disappointed at the number of members who missed this crucial vote impacting public education nationwide," Bryant says. "And, as evidenced by the unorthodox voting procedures, it is clear that majority support in the House is as illusory as the grand promises made by voucher proponents."
According to Egan, "The House leadership didn't violate the rules, but they had to use every trick in the book to get this through."
Rep. Ernie Fletcher (R-Ky.), who had voted against the voucher amendment Sept. 5, voted for it on Sept. 9. He later said he had switched sides after receiving assurances that the vouchers would be restricted to low-income children in poorly performing public schools as defined in NCLB.
Sponsors of the voucher amendment later denied that such an agreement had been made and indicated that the voucher program would serve far more than the 15 schools in the city that failed to make adequate yearly progress under NCLB. The Davis amendment would give "preference" to children in low-performing public schools.
Public opposes vouchers
The House action on a D.C. voucher program comes at a time when public support for vouchers appears to be declining. The September 2003 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans oppose private school vouchers, an 8 percent gain from 2002.
According to a poll commissioned by NSBA, 76 percent of D.C. voters oppose vouchers if it means less money for public schools, and nearly 80 percent believe that private schools accepting students with vouchers should be required to meet the same accountability standards as public schools.
A majority of D.C. school board and city council members oppose the voucher bill. But congressional proponents of the measure made the most of the bill's endorsement by Mayor Anthony Williams, board of education President Peggy Cafritz, and city council member Kevin P. Chavous, all Democrats.
One of the issues raised by voucher opponents is that members of Congress who do not support a voucher program in their own state believe there is no harm in voting for a voucher program for the District of Columbia.
Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Association, notes that Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), for example, supports vouchers for the District of Columbia, while her constituents in California twice rejected ballot initiatives to create voucher programs -- the last time by more than 70 percent.
"When voters get down to it, they don't want their public school dollars going to support private schools," Plotkin writes in a letter published in the Washington Post Sept. 10. "The public is -- as it should be -- uncomfortable with the fact that private schools are not held accountable to the standards demanded of public schools."
The D.C. voucher program is the "camel's nose under the tent," Plotkin says. It is "the first step toward a national voucher system."
Advocacy pays off
The Washington Post also published an article describing how the D.C. voucher proposal is attracting attention across the nation and, in particular, is igniting advocacy efforts by public school supporters.
The article describes how Cedar Rapids, Iowa, school board member Susan McDermott and other public school advocates in her community put the pressure on Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) to oppose the voucher amendment.
Leach was one of 15 Republicans to break with his party and vote "no." Just three Democrats crossed party lines to vote for the measure.
According to the Sept. 11 article, "Partisans on both sides of the issue yesterday pointed to local grassroots lobbying by people such as McDermott to explain how close opponents came to defeating President Bush's school choice initiative in a Republican-controlled House -- and why anti-voucher forces might prevail when the measure reaches the floor of the GOP-controlled Senate this month."
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| Reproduced with permission from the 2003 issue of School Board News. Copyright © 2003, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789. |