Education Law

DC voucher extension defeated in the Senate

Thanks to NSBA’s advocacy team and state associations, an attempt to renew the pilot DC voucher program for five years and to add new students was defeated on the Senate floor yesterday.  Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) offered the amendemnt to the FAA reauthorization bill being debated. You can see a vote count here to find out what your Senators did.  

The fight to defeat vouchers might not be over after yesterday’s vote because Lieberman has said that he planned to attach the amendment to other legislation moving in the Senate.  Repeatedly the DC voucher program has shown no significant impact on student achievement; particularly on low-performing students, to whom the program was supposed to target, see studies on NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center. 

Voucher proponents continue to argue that it’s a relative small program – with 1,200 students in D.C. But the fact is American taxpayers are paying for a small group of students to attend private schools which are not held to the same accountability as public schools and do not provide the same level of services in areas such as counseling, special need services, English-as-a-second language, etc. 

As Sen. Byron Dorgan (R-ND) said on the floor yesterday, “Public dollars should be spent on public schools. Yes there are improvements that are needed in public schools. Why don’t we invest in those improvements. Here in the District of Columbia they are $40 million short of what is needed. Yet we are  using public dollars to support vouchers for private schools.”

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on March 17, 2010 (boomark / email).