7/22/03 -- A bill to create a voucher program for the District of Columbia has been approved by a House committee by the narrowest of margins.
NSBA is urging members of Congress to oppose the bill. "Among its numerous flaws, the bill fails to ensure public accountability for federal tax dollars and runs counter to voters' opinions on vouchers," says NSBA Associate Executive Director Michael A. Resnick. "NSBA opposes any efforts to subsidize elementary or secondary private, religious, or home schools with public tax dollars."
The House Government Reform Committee approved the D.C. Parental Choice Incentive Act (H.R.2556) July 10 by one vote.
The 22-21 vote was generally along party lines with the exception of two Republicans who voted against it -- Rep. John M. McHugh (N.Y.) and Rep. Todd R. Platts (Pa.).
The vote would have been a tie -- and the bill would have been stalled in committee -- if Rep. Major Owns (D-N.Y.) had not been out of town for a medical appointment.
The bill, introduced by committee Chair Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Education and the Workforce Committee Chair John Boehner (R-Ohio), would allow parents to receive up to $7,500 to send a child to a private school. Vouchers would cover tuition, fees, and transportation.
The bill would serve up to 2,000 students. There are 67,500 children in D.C. public schools and 11,600 in charter schools.
Under the bill, eligible students must be residents of the District of Columbia, and their family income cannot exceed 185 percent of the federal poverty level.
Participating schools would not be allowed to discriminate based on race, color, national origin or gender, but religious schools would be allowed to "maintain their character through their employment practices," Davis says. And schools would be allowed to offer single-gender classes or programs.
The funds would be distributed to various non-profit organizations and D.C. government agencies. They would have to demonstrate how they will recruit students, find participating schools, and ensure that funds are used properly. Priority would be given to low-income students in low-performing schools.
During the committee action on the bill, two amendments were rejected.
One, proposed by Rep. William L. Clay Jr. (D-Mo.), would have required private schools that accept voucher students to comply with the same federal accountability rules that public schools must follow.
The other amendment, proposed by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), called for an alternative plan to provide $12 million for "transformation schools."
These are low-performing public schools that are reorganized and given additional money to improve student achievement. They have seen higher student achievement and high levels of parental satisfaction.
The bill's sponsors say the voucher program would be funded with "extra" money, so funds wouldn't be drained from public education.
But this is not the case, Resnick notes. While the bill would authorize $15 million for the program, the House Appropriations Committee approved shifting $10 million from education programs to the District of Columbia appropriations bill to fund the voucher program.
Even though the D.C. voucher bill would be restricted to a single city, Resnick notes, its use of federal money to support private education would have an impact on school districts, taxpayers, and students across the nation.
NSBA believes the millions of dollars spent on a D.C. voucher program should be invested in public education nationwide.
NSBA took to the airwaves in recent weeks to spread the message about how vouchers hurt public schools. Marc Egan, director of NSBA's Voucher Strategy Center, appeared on the "Buchanan and Press" talk show on MSNBC July 3 and on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" July 9.
A 2001 Zogby International poll, commissioned by NSBA, overwhelmingly found that large majorities of Republican voters, like all voters, expect private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers to meet basic public accountability requirements, including some of the requirements related to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
For example, the poll found that among Republican voters:
• 90 percent agree with the NCLB mandate calling for schools to give students standardized tests and report the results;
• 90 percent believe students in private schools must meet the same academic standards as public schools;
• 88 percent believe all schools should publicly disclose how they spend tax dollars; and
• 76 percent believe private schools should admit all students, regardless of academic or physical abilities.
The D.C. voucher bill includes none of these accountability measures. It also doesn't require private schools to meet the highly qualified teacher mandate in NCLB.
And while the bill calls for students to use vouchers to transfer from public to "higher-performing" private schools, it doesn't include any objective measures to determine whether a private school is "higher performing."
"Republican voters -- by large margins -- expect private schools to meet public accountability requirements that also apply to their public schools," Resnick says. "In states where voters have considered voucher initiatives, voters have overwhelmingly rejected proposals that lack public accountability requirements."
Even President Bush is on the record in support of holding voucher schools accountable. "If a school receives a scholarship, then the school needs to be held accountable as well," Bush said July 1 in a speech promoting the voucher bill at a Washington, D.C., charter school.
"The same accountability system applies to the recipient school as it does to the public schools in Washington," Bush says. "We want there to be accountability throughout the system." Unfortunately, the D.C. voucher bill does not contain these accountability standards.