President Barack Obama included millions of dollars in next year’s budget to ensure that more than 1,700 D.C. children currently attending private schools with the help of federally funded vouchers can remain until they graduate, The Examiner has learned.
Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget proposal contains $12.2 million to maintain private school vouchers for the 2010-2011 school year. The president believes the program should be funded until the children who are already enrolled finish school, sources said, but no new students will be allowed to participate.
Details of the budget are slated to be released Thursday.
House Democrats killed the program through budget language barring reauthorization of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program without approval from Congress and the D.C. government — both of which are controlled by Democrats. The Appropriations Committee urged D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee to “promptly take steps to minimize potential disruption and ensure smooth transition” for voucher recipients who must re-enroll in a public school.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan disagreed, telling The Associated Press in March, “I don’t think it makes sense to take kids out of a school where they’re happy and safe and satisfied and learning.” Mayor Adrian Fenty urged the same in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
The voucher program provides roughly 1,700 low-income D.C. students up to $7,500 a year for tuition at a private school. Participants have shown limited gains in reading, but virtually no advances in math, according to a Department of Education study, though the program has had a positive impact on parent satisfaction and perceptions of school safety.
Voucher opponents, including powerful teachers unions, contend the money benefits only a handful of students, and would be better spent improving the city’s public education system. Senate Republicans sought to preserve the program by attaching language to a 2009 omnibus spending bill, but that move failed. Created in 2003, vouchers were a key component of a “three-sector approach” to D.C. education promoted by the Bush administration. Each year, the federal government provides equal funding, $14 million each, for public schools, charter schools and vouchers.
White House Correspondent Julie Mason contributed to this report.
