Let Them Eat Vouchers
MANGU-WARD, KATHERINE
Let Them Eat Vouchers Poor kids in D.C. could get an education if this bill passed the Senate. BY KATHERINE MANGU-WARD THE MOVEMENT to set up vouchers for low-income kids in Washington, D.C., has...
...Nina Rees, of the Department of Education, calls this argument "insulting...
...Her amendment also requires that participating children show academic improvement after three years...
...Louisiana Democrat Mary Lan-drieu recently submitted an amendment that would allow only schools that accept the voucher as full tuition payment to participate...
...Norquist says he is "surprised [voucher advocates] are doing as well as they are . . . considering that we don't have an organization in the way that the other side has the National Education Association...
...subcommittee, says that local groups have been doing the heavy lifting...
...know exactly how he feels...
...Feinstein credits a "personal appeal" from D.C...
...Like 46 percent of congressmen, according to a recent Heritage study, Specter sends his kids to private school...
...But such breakthroughs have been few...
...mayor Anthony Williams, a fellow Democrat, with winning her over...
...city council [Kevin Chavous], and the school board president who received more votes than anyone else in the last D.C...
...The D.C...
...by the Washington Scholarship Fund, a private scholarship organization...
...And he has...
...voucher program would make available about 1,700 vouchers worth $7,500 each...
...is typical of voucher debates nationwide...
...Terry Moe of the Hoover Institution says the divide in D.C...
...It would be a pity if all this courage were for nought...
...Voucher supporters say Landrieu's amendment could cripple the program...
...One moderate senator who's gumming up the works is Republican Arlen Specter, who cast the sole vote against the D.C...
...And Washington parents are clearly on Williams's side...
...But, despite support from Democrats Zell Miller of Georgia and Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Senate Republican leaders apparently fear they lack the 60 votes necessary to block a filibuster...
...schools...
...Even more surprising than Fein-stein's support may be the lack of enthusiasm from traditional voucher supporters...
...And Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting delegate from D.C., has repeatedly emphasized that "a majority of elected officials" in D.C...
...Parents in D.C...
...where he lobbied for the D.C...
...They haven't been working with us...
...In short, she says, "you have three locally elected African-American Democratic officials asking for school choice...
...Feinstein, Williams, and other D.C...
...If it has backers as diverse as Bush and Feinstein, why hasn't this bill passed...
...This provision was ultimately dropped, but Bush pledged to return to the issue...
...election [Peggy Cooper Cafritz] are all asking for this...
...Landrieu says if her proposed changes are not adopted, she will vote against the bill...
...budget, and the bill must be reconsidered before the session ends, but after a week of debate, it has been set aside...
...He has since compared the conditions in D.C...
...appropriations bill in committee...
...The reason he does so, he has said, is "they didn't have access to a good public school...
...His original No Child Left Behind plan included $75 million for localities that wanted to experiment with school choice...
...voucher plan...
...The Washington Scholarship Fund had 7,500 applications in 1998—that number represents more than 17 percent of the district's total school population...
...She points out that "the mayor, the head of the education committee on the D.C...
...She says the program is being forced on her city by national Republicans eager to exploit the unique relationship between the federal government and the district...
...The most prominent is, of course, Mayor Williams, who recently told the Washington Post that over a year ago, he "got up one morning and decided there are a lot of kids getting a crappy education, and we could do better...
...They also dwarf the maximum of $3,000 offered Katherine Mangu-Ward is a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...They have gone out on a limb and endorsed an idea that has not been popular with their parties...
...Teachers' unions, long opposed to vouchers, have been running ads in the districts of wavering Democratic senators...
...Democrats have put much on the line by lending support to a typically Republican cause...
...Black parents are consistently pro-vouchers...
...oddly lackluster support from school choice advocates, waffling from moderates, and a threatened filibuster have the relevant bill stalled in the Senate— and kids stuck in failing D.C...
...Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the chairman of the Senate D.C...
...virginia Walden-Ford, the head of D.C...
...The voucher plan is part of the D.C...
...oppose the vouchers...
...A version of the bill has already snuck through the House in a 209-208 vote...
...schools to a "natural disaster" and a "slow-moving train wreck...
...But the most important supporter of vouchers these days is President Bush...
...She recently opposed a voucher program in her home state of California, but says the D.C...
...These "opportunity scholarships" are significantly larger than the vouchers offered in Milwaukee and elsewhere...
...Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who has long been involved in the school choice movement, disagrees...
...Bush recently held an event at the KIPP academy in Southeast D.C...
...plan is different because it appropriates $13 million in new federal money instead of dipping into existing school funds...
...Parents for School Choice, says "national groups haven't really been here...
...Landrieu's children, according to the Heritage report, also attend a private school, a pretty tony one, too, that costs about $20,000 a year...
...She also emphasized that her support was conditional, since the program is actually a limited, five-year pilot with testing and accountability provisions...
...BY KATHERINE MANGU-WARD THE MOVEMENT to set up vouchers for low-income kids in Washington, D.C., has gained a surprising ally—lifelong voucher opponent Senator Dianne Feinstein...
...Feinstein succeeded in adding an amendment making testing of participants even more stringent, a change that has led some private schools to decide they won't participate in the program, should it go through...
...It's the black elites, the NAACP types, that are against vouchers...
Vol. 9 • October 2003 • No. 5
