School choice is generally a state issue, but advocates took their case to the United States House of Representatives Wednesday for a hearing of the Education and the Workforce Committee.
Gerard Robinson, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, explained several ways Congress can support school choice.
Robinson said the federal government should let federal funds for low-income students follow children to a school of their choice. That reform is favored by Republicans, but strongly opposed by Democrats and teachers’ unions. “One way to find middle ground on this issue is to put the decision in the hands of states,” Robinson wrote in his prepared testimony. Rather than force every state across the country to participate, liberal states with qualms over this portable federal funding could decline.
When Congress replaced No Child Left Behind in 2015, early GOP proposals would have let low-income students take their funding to a public school of their choice. The bipartisan compromise that President Obama signed into law did not have portable funding.
Robinson also said 529 education savings plans should be expanded to let parents use the funds earlier in their child’s education. The plans are currently focused on higher education, but could be expanded to include K-12 education expenses. That would be useful for private school tuition, as well as tutors, textbooks and other education expenses. Expanding 529 plans would also expand school choice without taking funding away from public schools.
Several states give some students a portion of their education funding in a personal account that can be used on a variety of K-12 educational needs like the one mentioned above.
Congress already supports school choice in a couple ways, including federal funding for charter schools.
Although they didn’t have specific proposals for federal action on school choice, Robinson was joined at the hearing by North Carolina State Rep. Rob Bryan and Denisha Merriweather. Bryan sponsored legislation in North Carolina in 2013 that gives low-income students there a tuition scholarship to attend the school of their choice.
Merriweather used Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program to attend a private school, and went on to become the first person in her family to graduate from high school. Now Merriweather is in graduate school and expected to earn her degree in 2017. “The cycle of poverty is ending in my family, thanks to the Florida Tax-Credit Scholarship,” Merriweather said. “I received a quality education and my siblings are now seeing how to take advantage of every educational opportunity.” The tax-credit scholarship program gives businesses a tax credit for donating to organizations that give private school tuition scholarships to students.
Naturally, not everyone at the hearing supports school choice. “Today we have before us yet another challenge to the limited pool of funding, one that serves to divert public funds to subsidize the private education of a relatively small number of children at the expense of a larger majority attending public schools,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., in his opening statement. “Instead of providing a choice to students in underperforming schools, these programs are using public money to pay tuition for students already in private schools,” Scott said of tuition voucher programs in Milwaukee and Indiana, as an example.
Not every Democrat opposes school choice. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., has long been a fan of school choice. “It’s never too late to celebrate school choice,” Polis said Wednesday noting that National School Choice Week was celebrated last week. “We should celebrate school choice all 52 weeks of the year.”
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
