Senate vote means end of DC Opportunity Scholarship Program
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
March 10, 2009
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday opted to kill D.C.’s federally funded school voucher program rather than risk sinking the $410 billion omnibus spending bill that will fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year.
The amendment offered by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., would have struck rider language inserted into the appropriations bill that ends the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program after the 2009-2010 school year, unless Congress and the D.C. Council renew it.
Ensign’s amendment failed by a 58-to-39 vote.
Barring passage of a stand-alone reauthorization bill, the roughly 1,700 low-income D.C. youth who currently receive up to $7,500 a year for tuition at a private school would have to enroll in a public or charter school in 2010.
“I believe the debate over the D.C. Voucher Program is an important one,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Monday during the floor debate. “But this bill is not the place to do it. If I were to vote yes and others were to vote yes, it would kill this bill, and we all know that.”
In a letter to Feinstein sent Tuesday, Mayor Adrian Fenty said he supports maintaining the so-called “three sector approach” to education funding, that is, equal federal money for public schools, charter schools and vouchers. In any case, Fenty wrote, “it would not be productive to disrupt the education of children who are presently enrolled in private schools.”
Congress funds $14 million a year in vouchers, which supporters say offer students a way out of a failing public education system. Participants are “thriving,” said Ensign, who accused the program’s critics of buckling to teachers unions.
“This is just a little experiment, a little competition that people want to come to this floor and destroy,” he said.
The landmark voucher program, established in 2004, was set to expire this June but won a one-year reprieve last fall.
The effort is worth evaluating and perhaps continuing, but there are too many unsettled questions — student success, school safety and teacher quality among them — to extend it through an appropriations bill, said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. And District leaders, who are being left out of the conversation, ought to have a role in the conversation rather than be used “as our laboratory.”
