School Vouchers: John Boehner Pushes To Revive Program In DC As Model For National Reform

WASHINGTON — GOP House Speaker John Boehner and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced legislation Wednesday to revive a school voucher program for District of Columbia students nearly two years after Congress began phasing it out.

In a statement Wednesday, Boehner said the D.C. program is a model that can work well in other cities and should be the starting point of any new bipartisan education reform legislation developed with President Barack Obama's administration.

"There's only one program in America where the federal government allows parents from lower-income families to choose the schools that are best for their children, and it's right here in D.C.," Boehner said. "If we're serious about bipartisan education reform, then this bipartisan education bill should be the starting point."

Democratic Washington Mayor Vincent Gray opposes the voucher program as an intrusion into local government. Through a spokeswoman, he said the city already has a popular public charter school system that provides parents a choice in education.

Boehner, referring to Obama's State of the Union address on making the nation more competitive globally, said vouchers make the U.S. education system more competitive.

On Tuesday night, Boehner hosted Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Catholic archbishop of Washington, at the speech, along with D.C. Catholic teachers and students who are receiving public funds to attend private schools through the program.

The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State blasted the legislation, saying it would increase the federal budget deficit by subsidizing religious schools.

The voucher program was created in 2004 as a five-year pilot program with support from then-Mayor Anthony Williams to give about 1,700 low-income students up to $7,500 annually as partial scholarships to cover private school tuition. Just over 1,000 students are still receiving the scholarships, but new students weren't accepted last year as part of the phase-out.

Boehner also helped create the original program, which started in D.C. because Congress has more control over the city than it does over states. The Republican Congress at the time saw it as a school reform tool designed to give parents a choice to leave poor-performing public schools. Families apply for the scholarships but they must meet income limits.

A three-year analysis released in 2009 by the Education Department found that D.C. students receiving vouchers made modest gains in reading but no measurable progress in math. At the time, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the results did not justify continuing the program. Advocates said the improved student achievement in reading was laudable.

The legislation introduced Wednesday would increase the scholarship to $8,000 annually for elementary students and $12,000 for high school students.

Those amounts fall short of the $32,000-plus tuition at elite private institutions, such as Sidwell Friends School, where Obama's daughters are enrolled. Catholic school tuition ranges from $5,200 to more than $15,000. Many private schools award their own financial aid.

Comments

[Anthony Krinsky]

04:37 AM on 01/30/2011

Helping poor kids leave failing public schools to attend Catholic schools where they can find love, structure, and teachers who know their material is... wrong? A wall street scam? Imposing religion on America? These accusations are ridiculous and transparent in their defense of unaccountable, tenured, teacher union loyalists. What about the children? Why shouldn't every parent be able to find a better school for their children than what DCPS assigns them?

[Samson1]

02:46 PM on 01/28/2011

How about we apply a little scientific method and find out what actually works? I know, I know, Scientific Method and Republicans, Oil and water. If you don't know what works and it is pretty obvious we have no idea what works, then maybe the first step is to actually find out.

[Amy Rollins]

12:15 PM on 01/28/2011

Voucher pushers always make me so sad. Not because I necessarily don't agree with them, but because that's all they've ever got. They're such lazy, inside-the-box thinkers, and they cling to this "vouchers will save us" idea like it's the frickin' 11th commandment.

How about we totally revamp how we educate our children, misuse testing, view teaching and teachers, and just completely overhaul the whole system before we jump onto the voucher bandwagon? Answer: because vouchers are easier to implement, and tax the brain less.

Politicians trying to fix education is like my 2 year old trying to perform brain surgery.

[Bryan Boru]

01:38 AM on 01/28/2011

Excellent move John. This tea partier appreciates it. It's exactly the kind of common sense policy that should be pushed as hard as possible now.

[sawyer0413]

07:30 PM on 01/27/2011

One of the problems of analysis of this kind of data is that far too many of the analysts have a strong agenda. Imagine if medical research suffered from the same issue. Imagine if aspirin were a republican-backed drug, and was opposed by democrats. One side would play up the positives, while the other played up the negatives. Research should not happen this way, especially when it concerns something as vitally important as education.

When you do find research, the researchers are writing to and for other researchers. They are not writing for the general public. So, it is easy to take what they produce and distort it wildly.

This is no different for vouchers. The whole process is so politically charged that discerning the truth is often impossible. Add to this, a well-known influence to studies called the Hawthorne effect (think placebo effect for human studies), and it is possible that the whole thing is merely chance.

If change is going to happen, it must happen systemically, and it must happen with attention to reducing variation. Those statements are not sexy soundbites. They are not easily digested concepts. Which makes it all that more difficult to see that they are ever implemented. For the sake of us all, I hope they are.

[od]

03:07 PM on 01/27/2011

An $8k voucher will give a nice kick-back to already affluent parents. It will not enable those making even the average income ($59k), much less those living below poverty, to send their children to private school.

$18,390 Jewish Primary Day School
$26,000 Sheridan School
$24,000 Capitol Hill Day School
$16,850 Gonzaga (1)
The median household income for a D.C. resident was $59,290.
Percentage of residents living in poverty in 2009: 18.4% (2)

(1) Source: www.privateschoolreview.com (These schools were the first four randomly selected from the list that included tuition rates in the write-up. Note that these costs do not include application fees, uniforms, supplies or transportation.

(2) Source: www.city-data.com

[GrantRobertson]

10:20 AM on 01/29/2011

Thank you. Vouchers can only really work if they are high enough to actually pay for all of the tuition. Otherwise they are nothing more than yet another government kick-back to the already wealthy. I think the republicans know this and that is why vouchers are the only "solution" they ever propose. It is a "solution" specifically designed to make matters worse for the poor and better for the rich.

[Cbrown90]

03:05 PM on 01/27/2011

It is clear the government "junkies" are all up in arms about this. Anything that changes the present system a creates the possibility that the "junkies" might not get their fix scares the hell out of them!

Try to imagine a completely new way of educating our children. Something that the inovation skills of America comes up with. Something entirely new. What are you afraid of? That it might work and that there will be even more proof that government-run schools are a failure?

How many more years of lower and lower result do you need to see the truth?

Time to try something different!

[leskataus]

08:23 PM on 01/27/2011

For starters, try to find a private school that is participating. By accepting public money, private schools are essentially being turned into public schools. That means they can't turn away students they normally would reject and you can forget about having single sex schools. Most private schools want to stay private and that's why they don't want to participate in the voucher program.

[Cbrown90]

08:43 PM on 01/27/2011

We don't have a voucher system of any real kind in America. The teacher unions try the scam called charter schools and they go along with it as long as they have controil over the money.

A real voucher system works with the understanding that the money for schools belongs to the tax payer themselves. When it is returned to the parents with school age children en mass and in hugh amounts, the private school system will explode with growth of new schools.


New unimagined schools will be created. Not just religious schools. Not just private elite schools for the rich. There are real educators that will start many new inovative schools, locally to suit every need. Even those kids with special needs.

The good teachers? Everyone knows who those teachers are. The schools will compete for and advertise the good teachers at their schools. At some private schools, the good teachers make much more than they private sector ones do! Quality earns reward and the private system will pay it!

[Yorksgal]

02:50 PM on 01/27/2011

It's funny how all these pro-voucher people are saying oh but it gives poor children a chance - have you really thought about this?

School A is the best in the area, school B is mediocre, but all the children from school B - vouchers in hand want to go to school A - see a problem?

Private school says yes let accept vouchers - oh wait a minute those vouchers fall well below our tuition, or we will only accept the cream of the crop and the others can go elsewhere. And then what happens to the child when the "private" children are able to go on trips, attend events, etc. which cost extra and the "voucher" children can not afford to do this?

Years ago the answer was bussing and that didn't work either.

[missmanners]

02:07 PM on 01/27/2011

Where's Boehner getting the money for this?
Wasn't he opposed to vouchers in The Affordable Health Care for America Act?

[Gregory Gull]

11:50 AM on 01/27/2011

How does providing a voucher actually improve the system of education? It doesn't! How could it! It just shifts the burden and improves nothing. The answer to how do we improve is not to turn it into a competition--essentially putting it in the hands of private interests--rather it is to first understand it as a system and then work on improving it with the guidance of Deming's System of Profound Knowledge.

http://www.forprogressnotgrowth.com/2009/11/21/hey-einstein-solve-this/

[sawyer0413]

07:35 PM on 01/27/2011

Always a pleasure to see someone who shares an understanding of Deming. Our school system would be so dramatically improved if someone understood and applied Deming's 14 points. I wonder what he would say about the current trend of teacher evaluations, given that they are just performance reviews in disguise (see Deming Point #10).

[am10]

09:14 AM on 01/27/2011

I thought we already have choice. If you don't like your local public school, you can pay for private school, homeschool, move to another district or - here's a new one - get involved with your kid's school to make it and your child's experience the best it can be.

[Rachel1968]

09:37 AM on 01/27/2011

The first two options--private school and homeschool--are not really options for people who don't have the funds to do so (working parents have a hard time finding time to homeschool at night/weekends). Moving to a new district is an option for some, but in some areas all the districts within a reasonable distance of the parents' work are terrible.

[am10]

10:19 AM on 01/27/2011

I understand people can't do most of those things, leaving the final option of getting involved in your child's education and school.

[politician818]

03:09 AM on 01/27/2011

I'd honestly like to see some bipartisanship on this issue.

[stape45]

04:24 AM on 01/27/2011

That’s like saying you want the Dems to be as anti-People as the Repubs, because that’s the only way they would be on the same page.

[kauthon]

01:05 AM on 01/27/2011

Schools spend on avg. $10,000/student/year and 25% of those do not graduate. So yes a form of vouchers could work.

A) If a school takes vouchers every student has to be admitted for the amount of the voucher or then the school can't take any vouchers. (this should be set to current spending/student)
B) There are no guarantees the schools will be worse or better but it will give the chance schools themselves to be run individual­ly and not by a school board/NCLB­/ or any other governing body. This means more teacher power.
C) School drop out is between 20-25%(stu­dents that don't graduate) If a student doesn't go to school they can't collect the voucher. I guarantee business will find a way to get them coming to class.
D) One of the ways they would get them to come to 11th and 12th grade would be to open Trade schools. This brings us back to the diversity again.

This could be the start of a simple bill the beginnings should consist of more family choice and more teacher power. Everyone else is irrelevant(students count as family - lol)

[politician818]

03:08 AM on 01/27/2011

Your idea A would probably kill the voucher program, but I like that you're at least open to vouchers. Compassionate liberals should support vouchers, since vouchers help poor kids who are stuck in bad public schools that don't teach them anything.

[eceresa]

09:32 AM on 01/27/2011

Compassionate liberals might support vouchers if they actually helped poor kids. In general, they don't help the ones that take vouchers much, if at all, and they definitely hurt the ones that stay in the public schools. In a nutshell, that's why the people who've actually looked at the problem and understood it tend not to support vouchers.

[eceresa]

09:31 AM on 01/27/2011

Your voucher idea sounds a lot like charter schools under another name. Almost exactly like it, actually, with the only difference being that the money is given to the parents to give to the school instead of diverted directly to the school, as it is with charters.

Charters have not been a great success, on average.

[kauthon]

12:52 PM on 01/27/2011

Some have, some haven't A good friend of mine is a principal in DC Kipp Charter Schools so I'm a bit biased as I think she's done an outstanding job(I know its only one school).

That being said yeah I think parents should have more choice and power to decide which school their children attend. I also don't think schools should just receive money - if a school doesn't graduate 50% of its students why do they receive 100% of the money.

[changing]

09:42 PM on 01/27/2011

With vouchers you have to actually find a private school. Private schools have to be financially sound to survive. Charters on the other hand are on the government toll. They get the best of both worlds. Neither is a good idea. Vouchers don't pay for much and many private schools do not work with anyone other than "good' students with "good" parents. Charters also cherry pick, are run by all sorts, and often do worse than public schools. It is amusing however to see the Repubs causing a little heartburn to the corporate charter folks who have the Obama administration funding their money train.

[Spunkstar]

12:42 AM on 01/27/2011

School children are more and more viewed as the new untapped "raw" or "natural" resource just waiting to be exploited. Imagine the money that could be made. Imagine the money that could be made if there were no public schools in the way.

[Yorksgal]

02:37 PM on 01/27/2011

Absolutely correct. I have seen education from the public side and the private side and I know that the private side are all about the $ and what can they get from the children/parents once they are enrolled.

[Angie Sullivan]

11:19 PM on 01/26/2011

Less money, less money, less money. . .more accountability, more accountability, more accountability. Schools are being measured like a business - with data based systems that measure a snapshot in time.

Humans are complex and more than a test score. Schools are bleeding. Teachers are bleeding. How much more stress are you going to put on the system. Do you really want to kill public schools? Do you really want minority children and poverty ridden children on the streets instead of in school? Do you really want to shut down the schools and only have children of the rich educated? What kind of America would we have if you squeeze us until we die? Something is going to have to change alright - you are killing the kids and the teachers who love them.

[ian0000]

09:40 AM on 01/27/2011

how is giving poor minority children a voucher hurting poor minority children?

[leskataus]

08:34 PM on 01/27/2011

What kind of school can they attend with that voucher? The money they would get wouldn't even come close to paying the tuition at most private schools. They wouldn't get to attend because their parents wouldn't be able to afford to make up the difference.