In 2001, when the White House decided it would work with congressional Dems on No Child Left Behind legislation, Dems made one thing perfectly clear: no vouchers. Plenty of ideas were on the table, but there was simply no way Dems would support a national plan that used public funds to subsidize tuition at religious and other private schools when there are still so many public schools in desperate need of assistance.
At the time, Bush didn’t even put up much of a fight. For the White House, vouchers were practically a bargaining chip that was easily discarded through the course of negotiations. Some of the president’s far-right supporters had hoped to use NCLB to help privatize education though vouchers, but the reality was, the president’s heart was never in it.
Vouchers, for the most part, have been a non-entity ever since. Congressional Republicans rammed through a voucher scheme for the District of Columbia — against the wishes of city officials — but that’s been the extent of the right’s progress on the issue.
Last night, in the State of the Union, Bush tried to re-start the fight all over again.
“Thanks to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships you approved, more than 2,600 of the poorest children in our Nation’s Capital have found new hope at a faith-based or other non-public school. Sadly, these schools are disappearing at an alarming rate in many of America’s inner cities…. [T]o open the doors of these schools to more children, I ask you to support a new $300 million program called Pell Grants for Kids. We have seen how Pell Grants help low-income college students realize their full potential. Together, we’ve expanded the size and reach of these grants. Now let us apply that same spirit to help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools.”
The president didn’t use the word “voucher,” but he didn’t have to (Republicans have been told repeatedly that the word doesn’t poll well, so they come up with euphemisms).
As long as the White House is going to throw this into the State of the Union, we might as well go to the trouble of pointing out how foolish this is.
First, Bush characterized the DC voucher program has some kind of sterling success story. It’s not: “A voucher program designed to send low-income children in the District to better-performing private schools has allowed some students to take classes in unsuitable learning environments and from teachers without bachelor’s degrees, according to a government report. The shortcomings are detailed in a draft prepared by the Government Accountability Office about the $12.9 million D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. The GAO said the program lacks financial controls and has failed to check whether the participating schools were accredited.”
Second, as TP explained very well, the president asserted as fact the notion that private schools out-perform public schools. This isn’t true either.
Third, it’s ironic that Bush talked about the success of the Pell Grant program in helping “low-income college students realize their full potential,” given that his administration has repeatedly scaled back funding for regular ol’ Pell Grants.
Ultimately, none of this comes as too big a surprise. Bush wants to privatize education in this country; what a shock. But for me, it was a reminder of just how little the president has to offer in the way of a policy agenda — instead of ideas he hopes to achieve, Bush recycled an old idea he knew a Democratic Congress would reject out of hand.
When Republicans ask why Dems struggle to take the president seriously on policy matters, we can add this to the list.