A new law cutting off taxpayer-funded private education for poor children in Washington is shutting 5-year-old Marquis Greene out of a school where his sisters have thrived.
It’s also providing a challenge to President Barack Obama’s education policies that’s as close to home as his daughters’ classrooms.
A spending law signed by Obama last month will end a program that gives low-income parents tuition vouchers of as much as $7,500 a year to send their children to private schools. Among 54 participating schools are Sidwell Friends, where Sasha and Malia Obama are students, and Ambassador Baptist Church Christian School, where Sherrise Greene sends her two daughters and had wanted to enroll Marquis.
Greene, who likened participation in the voucher program to “winning the Powerball,” learned this month that Marquis can’t receive similar help. The program is scheduled to end after the coming school year, and Arne Duncan, Obama’s education secretary, decided not to let new students join.
“It certainly presents an interesting question for President Obama,” said Dan Lips, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a research group in Washington that supports school-voucher programs. “Will he allow Congress to take away school from his children’s classmates?”
The voucher program, enacted in 2004, was backed by former President George W. Bush and congressional Republicans who said private-sector competition would improve public schools. Like many Democrats, Obama opposes vouchers as a long-term solution to the failings of public schools.
He hopes to persuade Congress to continue subsidizing 1,700 children now enrolled in Washington, according to White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
“He believes that we should avoid disrupting the education of students currently enrolled in this program,” Earnest wrote in an e-mailed statement.
The spending law enacted March 11 includes language by Sen.Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, to end funding for the program after the 2009-2010 school year unless Congress passes separate legislation to renew the 2004 law. A
Republican effort to delete Durbin’s provision was rejected by a vote of 58 to 39.
Like Obama, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee say vouchers should continue for current recipients. A Durbin spokesman, Max Gleischman, didn’t return a call seeking comment.
Sidwell Friends is a Quaker school that emphasizes diversity. Its tuition is $28,442 a year for lower grades and $1,000 more for middle and high school, according to its Web site. The school says 22 percent of students receive financial aid, with an average award of $19,264.
The nonprofit Washington Scholarship Fund, which administers the voucher program, is working with the city and participating schools on issues raised in a 2007 GAO report, said Byron Davis, the group’s senior director for business development and communications.
“Families are choosing schools that work best for their children,” Davis said in an interview. “They’re getting an opportunity that people who have money take for granted, especially in this community.”
