Congress and the Obama administration seem to want to ignore the issue of school choice and let the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program die of neglect. But across the nation, school choice is on the march and isn’t going away any time soon. Last week, the Democrat-controlled Illinois Senate passed a voucher bill for Chicago. And last Wednesday, in the largest rally for school choice in the nation’s history, more than 5,500 students and parents, as well as supporters from across political lines and an all-star team of speakers, gathered in …
President Obama is a school choice success story, and 38 percent of those in Congress have sent a child to a private school. So why are they denying the same choice to low-income parents in our nation’s capital? The Obama administration and Congress have put the successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program on a path to elimination. The program provides scholarships to 1700 low-income students to attend private schools. Students are making academic gains, and parents are satisfied now that their children finally can attend safe and effective schools. Ten days …
An eighth-grader named Shaketa is on the move. She’s representing thousands of her peers in the nation’s capital in the effort to save D.C. Opportunity Scholarships from the indefensible end imposed by Congress. Shaketa, along with seven other children among the program’s 1,700 current enrollees appear in provocative print advertisements displayed in Metro’s busy Union Station subway stop and on 225 buses traveling every Metro route in the District. The four-week ad campaign, sponsored by The Heritage Foundation, began Monday evening, when the chalkboard-themed ads greeted commuters along the Metro …
Amid the partisan bickering and procedural conundrums of the health care bill last week, a small group of senators from both sides of the aisle found common ground in advocating for school choice in the District of Columbia. An amendment to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for the next five years was brought to the floor Tuesday evening by Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and a bipartisan coalition of cosponsors including Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Robert Byrd (D-WV), and George Voinovich (R-OH). Although the Senate voted 42-55 …
“Vouchers drain money from public schools so that some students can go to private schools.” Somewhere in the vicinity of that declarative sentence – which school choice critics regard as some sort of argument -lurks the thought that vouchers must equal special advantages for some students that are denied to others. Guess what? That’s what the system of public schools is. A new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has identified 2,817 public schools around the country that serve very few poor students. These “private public schools,” as the …
The president’s proposed FY2011 budget increases funding to the Department of Education by $3.5 billion. But despite this significant increase, his budget effectively cuts the freedom of choice and educational opportunities from the lives of children living in the District of Columbia. What began last year as a low-profile attempt to quietly phase out the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program has become a noticeable agenda of denying school choice to District families. Representative John Boehner wrote about the administration’s decision today: “President Obama’s job-killing budget does away with school choice in …
Regular readers of the Foundry are probably aware that the federal government’s school voucher program in the nation’s capital, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, is benefiting students by improving school safety and providing higher academic achievement. We thought you’d probably like to know that they’re finding the same trends in Milwaukee, home to the nation’s longest-standing urban school voucher program. A recent report from School Choice Wisconsin presented an analysis of the number of calls made to 911 from schools in Milwaukee, similar to a Heritage analysis from last summer …
Talk about the audacity of “nope.” “When parents recognize which schools are failing to educate their children,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote in a guest column in The Wall Street Journal, “they will demand more effective options for their kids.” Americans “must close the achievement gap by pursuing what works best for kids, regardless of ideology,” Duncan urged, echoing a theme of President Barack Obama’s address to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “In the path to a better education system, that’s the only test that really matters.” What about the …
Speaking in Dayton, Ohio, yesterday, Barack Obama hit the right rhetorical notes on the current state of education in the United States: If we want to keep building the cars of the future here in America, then we can’t afford to see the number of Ph.D.s in engineering climbing in China, South Korea and Japan even as it’s dropped here in the United States. We can’t afford a future where our high school students rank near the bottom in — in math and science among industrialized countries, and our high …
On Monday, the Washington Post reported that the future of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is in doubt. This program—which is currently helping 1,900 disadvantaged kids attend private schools—is set to expire next year if Congress doesn’t extend it. The Post reports that D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is championing an effort to kill the program. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program gives low-income students scholarships worth up to $7,500 to attend a private school in the nation’s capital. It has proven widely popular with parents. Since 2004, approximately 7,200 students …
