2/22/05 -- During the first year of the federally mandated school voucher program in the District of Columbia, only about 75 of the 1,300 students who received vouchers were from low-income students who attended struggling public schools, states a report by the People for the American Way Foundation (PFAWF).
Although the law that created the $14 million voucher program requires that those students be given priority for vouchers, more than 200 vouchers were given to students already enrolled in private schools.
The Feb. 7 report, based on documents and e-mails obtained from the U.S. Department of Education through a Freedom of Information Act request, also found the department has failed to evaluate the program in the manner required by Congress. And the report says Administration officials attempted to “obscure information that might reflect poorly on the program.”
“It is clear that in its first year, the D.C. voucher program is not meeting the priorities claimed by its proponents and set out in legislation,” says PFAWF President Ralph G. Neas. “And it seems that program administrators were intent on making the program look good by diverting attention from inconvenient facts.”
According to the report, correspondence between department officials and representatives of the Washington Scholarship Fund (WSF), the organization contracted to administer the program, discuss ways of “portraying problematic information in the best possible light and obscuring information from the public and members of Congress.”
For example, a press release issued in June by WSF states that 1,721 eligible students applied for vouchers, and that students from D.C.’s 15 “needs improvement” schools would receive the highest priority. But it does not mention that only 74 students from those schools applied for vouchers.
The report quotes various e-mails between Nina Rees, assistant deputy secretary for the U.S. Education Department, and WSF President and Chief Executive Sally Sachar that discuss ways to avoid reporting details about the small number of voucher applicants from struggling public schools and to de-emphasize the fact that many applicants were already enrolled in private schools.
PFAWF also charges that Education Department and WSF officials have given schools incomplete information about the non-discrimination obligations of private schools that accept voucher students. Such schools were not informed about the D.C. Human Rights Act, for example, which prohibits discrimination against students and employees on the basis of disability and sexual orientation.
The report also says WSF did not clearly inform parents that participating private schools are allowed to impose admissions tests -- and thus refuse to accept voucher students.
WSF also allows schools that charge more the $7,500 voucher amount to charge voucher students the difference between the voucher amount and the tuition rate. PFAWF says these conditions “limit the availability of meaningful ‘choice’ for low-income families.”
“It’s important to remember that the program just began,” says Marc Egan, director of NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center. “But at least initially, it is following the pattern of the other few programs around the country in not matching the rhetoric of its advocates.”
ýDuring the debate in Congress, school board members told lawmakers that vouchers would go to students already in private schools and that private schools would be permitted to continue picking and choosing their students,” Egan says. “Congress didn’t listen, and now those predictions are coming true.”