School voucher fight in D.C. being watched carefully

c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-On the west side of Syracuse, N.Y., a public school and parochial school competed for the area’s students, remembered one resident, Rep. James Walsh, R-N.Y. Parents from Roberts Elementary and Most Holy Rosary knocked on their neighbors’ doors to sell the advantages of the competing schools. They worked to […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-On the west side of Syracuse, N.Y., a public school and parochial school competed for the area’s students, remembered one resident, Rep. James Walsh, R-N.Y.

Parents from Roberts Elementary and Most Holy Rosary knocked on their neighbors’ doors to sell the advantages of the competing schools. They worked to find ways to make the schools better. They raised money for improvements.


The results? “Excellence in those schools,” Walsh said.

Walsh has drawn on this experience to champion a $3 million voucher program that would allow poor Washington children to attend the public or private school of their choice. If approved, Washington would become the third city in the country to adopt school choice.

But the proposal, included in the the House version of the annual spending bill to fund Washington’s local government, has been opposed by key senators, teachers’ unions and Washington officials. The conflict has stalled the bill, forcing the city government to run on a temporary spending measure that expires Jan. 26.

The outcome of this political standoff could have an important impact on the school choice movement. Choice advocates say such a program in the nation’s capital would provide a potent symbol and strong push for their movement.

More important, they say, it would likely provide the Supreme Court case to test whether public money for private schools is constitutional.

If the court found the voucher plan legal, similar programs would sweep the country, the choice advocates say.

“Once they get up and running, it’s just going to accelerate,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Educational Reform, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for school choice and other reforms.

“D.C. would be the perfect trial place,” she said. “If it can happen (there), it can happen anywhere.”


Taxpayer-financed voucher programs have been proposed for years as an answer to what critics regard as the failure of the nation’s public schools. But vouchers are resisted by public school teachers, administrators, church-state separationists, and other advocates of public education. Only two cities have adopted voucher plans.

In August, the Wisconsin state supreme court blocked the expansion of Milwaukee’s 5-year-old voucher program because proponents wanted to add religious schools to the mix of private institutions eligible to participate. The Milwaukee program currently serves about 800 students.

A voucher program in Cleveland is scheduled to begin in September, but that, too, is under challenge in the courts because it would include religious schools among those eligible for voucher funding.

Although the Cleveland case is already in lower courts, a challenge to the proposed Washington plan would probably get to the Supreme Court first because the House bill requires an expedited review by the high court.

Opponents of school choice say it would suck away money badly needed by public schools and leave them with the most difficult students.

Linda Rosenblatt, a spokeswoman for New York State United Teachers, a union affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, called the voucher proposal a “cruel hoax” that would “make a sharper division between haves and have-nots.”


“You’d be further weakening the public schools,” she said. “The system of free public education is at stake.”

Comparing public and private schools is unfair, teachers and administrators argue. Private schools not only choose their students, they are not tied by the requirements and restrictions that burden public schools.

Besides, Rosenblatt said, public schools already are responding to concerns about falling standards, lax discipline and unsafe schools.

“What we really need to do is work on the system we have,” she said. “Despite its problems, it still provides miracles everyday.”

Supporters of school choice, however, say increased competition would accelerate public school reform. It may have started already.

Public schools are finally beginning to respond to concerns about standards and safety in part because of the growing support for voucher programs, particularly in poor, urban areas, school choice advocates say.


Privately financed voucher programs now operate in 26 cites, providing tuition aid for poor families, according to the Center for Education Reform. Some 13,000 children have received vouchers through these programs, the center said.

Another 10,000 are on the waiting list.

“This is a way of finally having a chance of getting an education for their children,” said Richard Baer, a Cornell University professor and school choice advocate. “This revolution is moving right across the country.”

TJB END GAVIN

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