Last week on these pages, Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., made a strong case for reinstating the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, established by Congress in 2004, which provided more than 3,300 disadvantaged and disabled District youngsters a chance to escape the city’s failing public schools and attend a private or parochial school of their choice. Yet Congress killed it in 2009 over the strong objections of D.C. parents, students and advocates of educational competition. The dollars-and-cents argument for reinstating OSP is irrefutable. The average scholarship award of $7,500 is less than half of the $17,600 it costs to educate a child in the public schools. This should convince even Mayor Vincent Gray to reconsider his opposition as he grapples with a $545 million budget shortfall. As a sweetener, new legislation introduced in Congress provides federal matching funds to D.C. public and charter schools, which would actually wind up with more money and fewer students to educate. The true value of OSP is reflected in its 91 percent high school graduation rate, almost double D.C. Public Schools’ 49 percent rate. Since the lack of a high school diploma is a major impediment to academic or professional advancement, canceling OSP doomed thousands of current and future District youngsters to repeat the cycle of poverty their parents are so valiantly trying to escape.
There’s another compelling reason why the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act introduced by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., should sail through Congress this time. A 2009 evaluation by the Lexington Institute and the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that D.C. parents cited safety as one of the top reasons for pursuing the scholarships. An analysis of 911 calls during the 2007-2008 school year obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows why: 912 incidents of violent crime were reported in DCPS, compared with 28 in private schools and 17 in public charter schools.
The U.S. Department of Education conceded that “the D.C. voucher program has proven to be the most effective education policy evaluated by the federal government’s official education research arm so far.” D.C. residents should demand that Democrats in Congress, including the District’s own Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, support a proven educational program that benefits D.C.’s most at-risk children and will bring in millions of additional dollars for the city’s public schools to boot.
