Other #1: Congressional Democrats Don’t Care About Education

Thanks to the U.S. Senate’s inability to remove language from the $410 billion Omnibus spending bill, which will essentially kill funding to Washington DC’s one of kind school voucher program, 1,700 low-income youths will be forced back into a poor educational system. Congress’ recent refusal to approve the amendment offered by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), which would have removed language from the Omnibus bill that requires the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program to be approved by the DC Council, and by the relevant Congressional Committees, is a huge blow to the program considering both government entities have expressed very little interest in reauthorizing the program. A better decision would be for Congress to unanimously support the voucher program to save the promising futures of students who are eager to learn.

While Congress was hopeful that the nation’s capital city, home to one of the worse public school systems in the country, would have received this program as a wake-up call to improve the system, test scores show other wise.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress the system ranked last in math and second-to-last in reading among all the nation’s urban public schools in 2007.

It is too soon to compare the District’s 2008 test scores on a national level however, The Chancellor’s Notes, which was released in July, 2008 reported that less than 50 percent of both elementary and secondary students passed the standardize testing. More specifically elementary students passed 46 percent in reading and 40 percent in math. Thirty-nine percent of secondary students passed reading and only 36 percent in math.

It looks like the historic cycle of the District’s subpar test scores won’t come to an end anytime soon. Adding insult to embarrassment are the school system’s continues reports of vandalism and violence. If students fear for their lives how can they possibly focus on an assignment?

Though studies so far haven’t shown that the voucher program improves students’ educational outcomes, having the alternative available certainly have a host of benefits.

The National Center for Educational Evaluation (NCEE) report, “Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program,” states that the voucher program has a consistently positive impact on parent perceptions of school safety. The report goes on to say that the program also has a huge impact on parent satisfaction with their child’s schooling. For example, the parents of students in the voucher program graded their child’s school “A” or “B,” which is 19 percent higher compared with the parents of public school students.

Why end a program that drastically benefits inner city youths and have given parents new hopes for their child’s futures?

The real reason the voucher program arouses opposition is the threat that it poses to the disproportionate influence of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the self-appointed gatekeeper of the education monopoly who also seem to have Congress in a choke hold.

Congressional Democrats say they believe in school choice, but they don’t fully accept the gamut of choices. They will happily promote charter schools, also opposed by the national teachers unions, but stop at vouchers. Republicans have consistently advocated for vouchers, and Democrats have convinced themselves that vouchers will somehow destroy the public school infrastructure.

The District’s Congressional Delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, has long opposed vouchers on the grounds that it takes money from the public schools— which is a nonsensical argument, given the separate federal funding for the program.

It would be more persuasive if members of Congress truly walked the walk and sent their kids to public schools. At that moment I’m sure Americans would say “if it’s good enough for yours, then surely it’s good enough for mine.”

The weakest argument is “if all students can’t benefit than no one should.” That mentality insinuates that the District’s parents and children are supposed to sit tight and wait on the promised reform to trickle down from Capital Hill to the local school systems. What happened to the belief that you save as many as you can now, and continue to save the rest later. If a boat full of people is sinking and the rescue team can’t save everyone should they let the few that they can save drown?

It is irrational and unjustified decisions like this one that will continue to perpetuate a failed public school system and suppress bright minds, which will continue the decay of the city. Congress should identify other places to save federal dollars and restore funding for this innovative program, which has already provided hope and change to a new generation of inner-city students in our nation’s capital.