As I mentioned last week, Congress is on the verge of passing a $13 million voucher plan for the District of Columbia. Under the plan, about 1,700 low-income students will get vouchers worth $7,500 to be spent as tuition at a religious or other private school.
The House already passed the plan by the closest of margins — one vote — earlier this month. Supporters of the measure may have the votes to pass it in the Senate, but several Senate Dems are threatening a filibuster.
In many ways, this is the most important voucher vote in recent memory. Voucher proponents were emboldened by the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer that government-financed education subsidies to religious ministries do not violate the First Amendment. If Congress passes a voucher law now, the dam may break, opening a flood gate of voucher initiatives nationwide (to add to the already existing plans in Florida, Wisconsin, and Ohio).
With this in mind, Republicans really want to pass this bill. Assuming they succeed, Bush, a long-time voucher fan, will no doubt sign it into law with a broad smile on his face.
To avoid a filibuster and pass the legislation, two moderate Dem senators — Mary Landrieu (La.) and Thomas Carper (Del.) — are suggesting a compromise. When it comes to vouchers, I’d much prefer outright opposition to negotiation, but the Landrieu/Carper recommendations highlight an important point about the larger debate.
Landrieu and Carper said that public schools are required to administer student assessment tests and report the results publicly to ensure accountability. Parents, the idea goes, can see exactly how well their children’s schools are performing. Moreover, public schools are required to meet specific teacher qualification standards.
So, Landrieu and Carper said, if we’re going to be spending federal funds on private school tuition, it’s not unreasonable to ask that publicly-financed private schools meet the same standards, administer the same exams, and ensure teachers have the same qualifications — not only in the interests of fairness, but to ensure accountability.
Voucher proponents always say they want “competition” in education. Fine, Landrieu and Carper are saying. Let’s make sure they compete on a level playing field.
How’d our pro-voucher friends react to these proposals to add standards and accountability to the proposed D.C. voucher program? They rejected it, of course, saying that Landrieu/Carper recommendations were meant to destroy the entire D.C. voucher effort.
I’m not so sure. Both Landrieu and Carper have expressed pro-voucher sentiments in the past. I believe their amendments are a sincere compromise to get this bill passed into law. If they simply wanted to kill the legislation, they’d support the filibuster and this whole thing would go away.
Even with the amendments, I’d still oppose the legislation. Nevertheless, the fact that voucher proponents resist any and all attempts to add accountability to the system speaks volumes and highlights one of the biggest flaws in any voucher system.
Voucher plans never include accountability. By their very nature, they can’t.
Elected officials and state agencies are given a choice under a voucher system: monitor and regulate the private recipients of public money to ensure responsible fiscal management and quality education or write a sizeable check and hope for the best.
Voucher plans literally put our money in private bank accounts with virtually no strings attached. And when we suggest that maybe we should add some accountability to the system, like Sens. Landrieu and Carper are arguing, pro-voucher forces whine incessantly and refuse to comply.
It makes me wonder why private schools would be willing to sacrifice their independence for a government check in the first place.
How can these private entities realistically ask for money with one hand while trying to sever the attached strings with the other? How can voucher advocates insist that private schools will accept our tax dollars, but not our questions about how it’s spent?