The Million Student March
WALSH, EDMUND
The Million Student March by Edmund Walsh LAST WEDNESDAY, 40,000 low-income kids around the country got good news: They’d been awarded four-year scholarships to attend private schools, the...
...Four times a year the school holds “partner events...
...Each award represents an opportunity for a child to escape public schools that even so staunch a District loyalist as D.C...
...And the gatherings help contributors appreciate that the checks they write go to educate actual children...
...Next year, the directors hope to enroll 60 children and add a fourth grade...
...Parents are the other crucial partners at Cornerstone...
...Its mission, in the words of executive director Patrick Purtill, is to reach kids “consigned to a public education system that was dismally failing...
...Reformers may be working to improve the public schools, but their efforts haven’t yet borne sufficient fruit...
...Cornerstone is serving 22 first through thirdgrade students...
...She volunteers well beyond her 20-hour requirement and loves the “family” atmosphere...
...Many of the people he calls sign up immediately...
...Tarina Williams followed up on an advertisement she saw in the Metro for the Washington Scholarship Fund...
...The organization, based in New York, matches every dollar raised locally and conducts the national lottery, which will disburse $160 million over the next four years...
...She was so determined to get her daughter Gemia out of public school that she was ready to get a second job or take out a loan, when a WSF scholarship came through...
...congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton concedes are “very, very poor...
...In Washington, D.C., House majority leader Dick Armey, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Sen...
...These help kids understand that, as Laperriere puts it, there are “a lot of people pulling for their success at the school...
...The board of advisers of the Children’s Scholarship Fund is an ideological rainbow—from Martin Luther King III and Erskine Bowles to George Shultz and Trent Lott...
...The arrival of Forstmann and Walton, each of whom donated $3 million, nearly tripled the number of children reached...
...Brandi Laperriere, a legislative assistant to Michigan senator Spencer Abraham, began her involvement as a volunteer tutor and mentor in the D.C...
...public system...
...Tammy Price found out about the fund through an intra-office e-mail...
...Jack Kalavritinos, a member of the Washington group’s Young Executive Board, says raising money for the program is a pleasure...
...Initial awards go to students in kindergarten through eighth-grade, with the understanding that the fund intends to continue supporting them as long as they stay in school...
...Edmund Walsh is an intern at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Some Cornerstone students receive partial scholarships from WSF, but most of the school’s funding comes from individual donors...
...I know this is the best...
...Besides, if competition from private schools spurs the reformers to think even harder about how to make public schools attractive to parents— as scholarship proponents contend it will— everybody wins...
...They sign a “Parental Covenant of Involvement,” in which they agree to make sure their children arrive on time, finish their homework, and have an orderly environment at home in which to work...
...But when it comes to privately funded scholarships, Feldman admitted, “It’s very hard to criticize what is essentially an act of charity...
...Bob Kerrey have all worked the public circuit for WSF...
...Now she and her husband, Andy, a member of Armey’s staff, are running the Cornerstone Community School in Northeast Washington, one of four new private elementary schools to open in the D.C...
...The organization’s rapid growth reflects the broad appeal of private scholarships...
...That experience allowed her to “see where the holes were,” she says...
...The high-school drop-out rate is the highest in the country...
...When she sent her three children through District public schools over a decade ago, Green says she never felt “that contact, that closeness” between parents and staff...
...In the District, the local charity is the Washington Scholarship Fund, established in 1993 by two former Department of Education employees, Douglas Dewey and George Pieler...
...It’s too soon to judge the academic results of a startup school like Cornerstone, but there and elsewhere, parents and guardians are showing enthusiasm for the new private-school opportunities...
...Rejina Green, whose grandnephew Ervon goes to Cornerstone, is a regular presence at the school...
...In Washington, D.C.—where Forstmann and Walton first joined forces in 1997—nearly 500 families won new scholarships last week, in addition to the 900 recipients whose scholarships will be renewed...
...Forstmann and Walton launched the effort with initial contributions of $50 million each...
...The Million Student March by Edmund Walsh LAST WEDNESDAY, 40,000 low-income kids around the country got good news: They’d been awarded four-year scholarships to attend private schools, the winners in a lottery whose applicant pool was an astonishing 1.2 million...
...So does Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who feels that the success of private schools is sometimes used to bludgeon public education...
...Children like Quiana and Gemia and Ervon are the strongest argument for making private schooling more accessible...
...area this academic year...
...We feel like we’ve set up a system where there’s accountability,” says Laperriere, and where parents are encouraged “to be really engaged...
...Others want to know if WSF is a voucher program, but when he explains “the private angle, they say, ‘Who can argue with that?’” WSF founder Doug Dewey himself opposes publicly funded access to private schools...
...Now she is “overwhelmed . . . so happy they gave me the opportunity” to choose a private school...
...All are required to pay some tuition and contribute 20 hours of volunteer work yearly...
...Asked why she chose Cornerstone for Ervon, Green says, “He’ll always know at least I tried to get the best out there for him...
...Founded less than a year ago, in June 1998, by Wall Street tycoon Ted Forstmann and Wal-Mart heir John Walton, the fund is the national coordinating arm for groups in 40 cities and states...
...Meanwhile, a number of government staffers and education professionals have taken up another part of the challenge: increasing the supply of school options for low-income children...
...She learned last week that her daughter Quiana has been awarded a scholarship, which will allow her to attend a Catholic kindergarten in the fall...
...In its first year, the Washington Scholarship Fund offered 56 awards averaging $850...
...Plainly, the privately financed Children’s Scholarship Fund is responding to a hunger for alternatives to public education...
...If the national numbers are impressive, it’s at the local level that the drama really plays out...
...Contributors are “partnered” with individual children, creating relationships between grade-schoolers and area professionals...
...As WSF’s Purtill says, “These kids can’t wait...
...District public schools are dead last in SAT scores as well as in the math, science, and reading portions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress...
Vol. 4 • May 1999 • No. 31
