As the new Congress settles in and Barack Obama assembles his team of educational advisers, prospects are dimming for the 1,900 mostly low-income District students who use federally funded vouchers to attend private school.
he vouchers, up to $7,500 per student, come from a pool of about $14 million designated by Congress specifically for D.C. The program, started in 2003 as a five-year pilot initiative, will run through the first semester of the 2009-10 school year. If Congress does not renew it by this summer, the money will disappear.
Five of the students using the vouchers attend Sidwell Friends School, where Obama’s daughters began class on Monday. Across the country, about 175,000 students rely upon vouchers.
But while many Democrats, including Obama and education secretary nominee Arne Duncan, have broken with Democratic tradition to support traditionally conservative reforms like charter schools, their enthusiasm for private school vouchers has been more tepid.
And Cecelia Rouse, a Princeton University economist recently tapped as one of three people on Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, has done several well-respected studies on them, but has found little reason to offer her backing.
“The best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered educational vouchers, most of which are not statistically different from zero,” Rouse and a colleague wrote in an August 2008 paper that included the most recent results of D.C.’s program.
Add to that a Democratic Congress largely supported by teachers unions opposed to vouchers, and proponents such as Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, are beginning to lose hope.
“In the absence of a new administration that supports vouchers, or strong local leadership to argue the case, it’s not anywhere close to clear that members of Congress will want to take the hit from the educational establishment,” Allen said.
Mayor Adrian Fenty has shown modest support for the program, Allen said, but has been more active in backing the judgment of Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who has made little mention of vouchers. And parents whose children participate in the program have not been vocal enough, Allen said.
Despite the pessimism of Allen and many of her peers, some remain hopeful because the program is small and relatively inexpensive.
“With so much going on with education in D.C., it’s hard to imagine Congress taking away one of the options for parents,” said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. “The backlash and the opportunity for an op-ed that doesn’t look too parent-friendly isn’t what they want.”
