Recently in Vouchers Category

From contributing blogger Erik Robelen:

With debate heating up over the future of the federal voucher program for the District of Columbia, a Senate panel has just announced a hearing on the matter for this Wednesday, May 13.

Based on the title: “The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program: Preserving School Choice for All,” it sounds like the controversial program will get a fairly sympathetic, well, hearing from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. This shouldn’t be too surprising, given the chairman is Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., a longtime proponent of D.C. vouchers.

The hearing comes as President Barack Obama last week unveiled a fiscal 2010 budget that proposes to continue voucher funding for students already in the program—effectively grandfathering them in—but not funding any new students. This approach seems likely to frustrate both the program’s critics and supporters.

A quick scan of the invite list for Sen. Lieberman’s hearing suggests a lot of sympathetic voices will be testifying, including former D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams. As far as I can tell, it looks like no outright opponents of the program will take part. Funny, the invite to Randi Weingarten and Dennis Van Roekel must have gotten lost in the cybermail.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:23 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

So it looks like President Obama is going to propose extending the D.C. voucher program, just for the kids currently enrolled, in his fiscal year 2010 budget, to be released tomorrow.

Politically, it's probably a smart move. The administration will avoid stories and commentaries about kids, including a couple of Sasha and Malia's classmates at Sidwell Friends School, getting booted from their desks.

But it should put an interesting twist on the debate over reauthorizing the voucher program. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an Independent Democrat from Connecticut, has said he will hold hearings on whether or not to renew the program, which is set to sunset this year.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 2:47 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

So...it's official. Jim Shelton, a former program director at the Gates Foundation, is really and truly helping to head up the Office for Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. (Big hat tip to Flypaper on this one).

And, even though the department hasn't sent around a release announcing the pick, Shelton is already hard at work in his new gig. He signed a letter, dated April 6, that was sent to the parents of new students slated to be enrolled in the D.C. voucher program. It says that the department "deeply regrets the confusion" over the program's future, and points folks to public school resources.

The letter signals that the department isn't going to allow new students to join the program, which is slated to expire after this year unless the Democratically-controlled Congress decides to renew it. (That's considered a long shot). The money already slated this year will go to students already enrolled in the program.

The Washington Post ran an editorial criticizing the department for playing politics this weekend. Do you agree that's what this is?

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:55 AM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

School choice advocates are high-fiving each other over an Institute of Education Sciences study that showed the D.C. Scholarship and Opportunity program has a positive impact on reading scores.

The report came out on Friday, which Flypaper views as a wussy attempt by the Obama administration to bury its findings. (The Washington Post wrote about it anyway, and had this editorial; thanks to Flypaper for the links).

As many folks are already aware, the Democratically controlled Congress approved a massive fiscal year 2009 spending bill that says this will be the last year of funding for the program, unless its authorization is renewed.

No one seems to think that's likely. Still, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut who organizes with the Democrats and chairs the committee that has jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, has said he'd like to hold hearings this year on reauthorizing the program.

I'm sure the program's supporters are already Xeroxing copies of the report, and probably the Post's editorial, to hand out at those hearings.

For more on the study, check out Inside School Research.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 3:18 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

In today's media briefing, President Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs indicated that even though Congress wants to zero out the Washington, D.C. voucher program, Obama doesn't want to disrupt the schooling of the students currently taking advantage of the program.

Though Obama is certainly not a big fan of vouchers, he continues to come down on the side of things that he says are working for kids. That's why he's called for an expansion of charter schools and has encouraged states to lift any caps they have on charters, even though some oppose this. Now, he's venturing into voucher territory--dangerous waters, as he no doubt learned during the campaign.

Here's a transcript of today's relevant Q-and-A with Robert Gibbs:

Q Robert, what does the President think about the D.C. scholarship program? The spending bill zeroes out and cuts the money for it.

MR. GIBBS: The President -- as I've said I think last week, the President doesn't believe that vouchers are a long-term answer to our educational problems and the challenges that face our public school system, where the vast majority of students are educated in this country. The President laid out a fairly robust education reform plan yesterday. But the President I think understands that there are -- it wouldn't make sense to disrupt the education of those that are in that system, and I think we'll work with Congress to ensure that a disruption like that doesn't take place.

Q So will he propose in his full budget to restore that funding for those kids already in the program?

MR. GIBBS: I'd certainly look through the budget stuff, but I think, whether it's in the budget or in the appropriations process, that we look for a way to work with -- work with Congress to ensure, as I said, that disruption doesn't take place.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:09 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The U.S. Senate today voted to pass a $410 billion 2009 budget bill, which zeroes out funding for the Reading First program.
And the measure could spell the beginning of the end of the D.C voucher program.

Supporters of the voucher program had sponsored an amendment to strip out language that could keep it from receiving funding next year, unless lawmakers vote to renew its authorization.

The provision, which was rejected on a vote of 58-39, was offered by Sen. John Ensign of Nevada and a bunch of GOP lawmakers, including former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Sen. Joesph Lieberman, an Independent Democrat from Connecticut, also championed the pro-voucher effort. The vote was mostly party line, with a couple of Democrats, including Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Robert Byrd of West Virginia, crossing over to vote with the GOP.

The amendment's defeat means the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program will lose its federal funding after this year unless Congress steps in to reauthorize it. Most folks think that's a pretty unlikely scenario, given that Democrats have hefty margins in both houses and, for the most part, aren't huge fans of vouchers.

Still, Lieberman, who chairs the committee that has jurisdiction over D.C., is planning to hold hearings on the program's future later this year. He may not be able to keep the it going, but it still should make for a pretty interesting debate, especially if he brings in D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, a Dem, who has been supportive of the program in the past.

The spending bill, which was approved by a voice vote after it cleared a key procedural hurdle by a vote of 62-35, will now go to President Barack Obama for his signature.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 8:10 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The controversial Washington D.C. voucher program will be the subject of the Kojo Nnamdi Show today on WAMU, a National Public Radio station.

EdWeek's very own Erik Robelen, who's starting to get Politics K-12 blogging fever, will be a guest, as will Virginia Walden Ford of DC Parents for School Choice and Margot Berkey of Parents United for the DC Public Schools.

Showtime is noon. Listen live here.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 10:44 AM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The respected and conservative free-market thinker Alan Greenspan, the revered former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, declared today he was "partially" wrong in thinking the free-market system could regulate itself.

He told Congress today: “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”

Does this economic crisis—and more specifically Greenspan's admission that there may be flaws in the free-market system—have implications for the debate over vouchers, and the theory that competition and free markets will improve public education?

(UPDATE: In fact, the Cato Institute's Andrew J. Coulson takes an in-depth look at this question in a September 2008 policy analysis titled "Markets vs. Monopolies in Education: A Global Review of the Evidence.")

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:02 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

For a guy who came late to the game with an education policy plan, Sen. John McCain seemed to talk longer about education than Sen. Barack Obama did during his acceptance speech.

But what really stood out about McCain's speech was that he portrayed school choice as the bedrock of his education plan. But it's really not. McCain's education policy plan is far more complex as it tackles the issues of teacher quality, accountability, and school technology, and although choice does have a role, it's a limited one.

In that regard, McCain's school choice rhetoric is disconnected from his policy proposals.

In his acceptance speech, he said:

When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

That's similar to what he said to the NAACP in Cincinnati, when he pledged "school choice for all who want it."

But he hasn't explained how the federal government would operate such school choice programs. What's more, in June, his chief education and adviser, Lisa Graham Keegan, told reporters that McCain doesn't want to use Title I money for private school vouchers.

What McCain's education plan calls for is a continuation of the existing District of Columbia voucher program. And, he says he supports choice within No Child Left Behind (but even there he's vague, and seems to support making the existing parental choices of tutoring and public-school transfers available to parents earlier.) It doesn't explain how to offer school choice for "all who want it."

As I was watching cable TV network coverage last night, at least two commentators held up his school choice rhetoric as an example of how he's telling the GOP what it wants to hear. And one pointed out that McCain's line about "education is the civil rights issue of this century" is a carbon copy of a President Bush line from 2000.

Of course, school choice makes for better speech material than ideas like accountability, data, and technology.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:05 PM | Permalink | 4 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. John McCain called for a shakeup of "failed school bureaucracies" and greater parental choice in education as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination Thursday night.

"Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school?" Sen. McCain said at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul., Minn. "We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work."

The crowd gave those lines one of the loudest roars of approval of the nominee's lengthy acceptance speech.

Calling education "the civil rights issue of this century," the Arizona senator said that parents deserve to choose a new school for their children a public school "fails to meet its obligations to students."

"And I intend to give it to them," Sen. McCain said. "Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity."

The Republican nominee portrayed his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, as beholden to the existing school system.

"Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucrats. I want schools to answer to parents and students," Sen. McCain said. "And when I’m president, they will."

Julie Harris, an Arkansas delegate and mother of six children, cheered as Sen. McCain delivered the education segment of his speech.

The Springdale, Ark., resident homeschools three of her children, one attends a private school, and her two teenagers take courses at a local community college instead of their neighborhood high school. They had been homeschooled as well.

"I am all for parental choice," Ms. Harris said after the speech. "We actually have relatively few private schools in Arkansas. I really want to see more charter schools."

"I thought he hit the nail on the head," said Eric Happala, a Minnesota delegate and a business consultant from the town of Dassel. "I liked that he said schools should be accountable to students and parents."

And he praised Sen. McCain's call to expand school choice. "I think that's really going to resonate with the African-American community," Mr. Happala said. "They're often the ones whose children are stuck in failing schools."

--Mark Walsh and Alyson Klein

Posted by Mark Walsh at 12:42 AM | Permalink | 32 Comments | TrackBacks (0)