Now, this is just getting mean. A newly Democratic Congress effectively killed the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship in March, shutting down the $14 million pilot program for public school vouchers, which serves 1,700 inner-city minorities in the District, as of the end of next school year.
At the time, Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Chuck Schumer argued the program simply needed to be evaluated before going forward, but the requirement that it be reauthorized by both Congress and the D.C. City Council was intended to be a death sentence in this political climate.
At the time of the fight in Congress, new Sec. of Education Arne Duncan voiced tepid support for the program, saying that students currently enrolled should be allowed to continue in their schools. Supporters of the program hoped that Duncan's statement, bolstered by tepid support from D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, might signal an openness to supporting the program in the name of school reform- a topic on which Obama's campaign and Duncan himself had previously been vocal.
Alas, it seems that is not to be, despite recent revelations that the evaluation Durbin was so interested in was released a month after the vote on the program and revealed- wait for it- "After 3 years, there was a statistically significant positive impact on reading test scores." There is some question as to whether Duncan suppressed the study until after the vote in the Senate, as it appears to have been ready by the time of the vote, but not officially released.
It's bad enough that Democrats are killing a program that parents love and is closing the achievement gap between poor minorities and whites. But as scandalous is that the Education Department almost certainly knew the results of this evaluation for months.
Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.
A former director of the Department of Education's Institute of Economic Sciences, which produced the study, argued Duncan would not have known the results until just weeks before its release, but one imagines Duncan certainly did not flex any muscles to get information about the study's "preliminary results" when they might have been timely and helpful. Like, before the Senate killed the successful program the Dept. of Education spent all that time and money studying.
This week, Duncan reveals the administration's real antipathy to the voucher program by informing the parents of children approved for vouchers for next year that they will not be allowed to use them. The Washington Post editorializes on the side of poor, minority children and against the administration:
Officials who manage the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program sent letters this week to parents notifying them that the scholarships of up to $7,500, were being rescinded because of the decision by the Education Department. Citing the political uncertainty surrounding vouchers, a spokesperson for Mr. Duncan told us that it is not in the best interest of students and their parents to enroll them in a program that may end a year from now. Congress conditioned funding beyond the 2009-10 school year on reauthorization by Congress and approval by the D.C. Council. By presuming the program dead -- and make no mistake, that's the insidious effect of his bar on new enrollment -- Mr. Duncan makes it even more difficult for the program to get the fair hearing it deserves.
That's not to mention the impact of the last-minute decision on these families. Many of the public charter schools already have cut off enrollments for the upcoming school year; the deadline for out-of-boundary transfers for the public schools has passed. No doubt Mr. Duncan is right about possible disruption for new students if the program were to end. But scholarship officials have been upfront with parents about the risks, and the decision really should be theirs. Let them decide whether they want to chance at least one year in a high-quality private school versus the crapshoot of D.C. public schools.
That, after all, is what this program is about: giving poor families the choice that others, with higher salaries and more resources, take for granted. It's a choice President Obama made when he enrolled his two children in the elite Sidwell Friends School.
And, the Democrat attempt to kill the program without actually having to take responsibility for killing it continues unabated. I have met the families who receive the Opportunity Scholarship. I have seen the relief in the eyes of single, working mothers who no longer have to send their children into ineffective and sometimes dangerous classrooms. Patricia William almost cried on a city bus when she first saw an advertisement for the scholarship, seeing it as a saving grace for her two sons. Carmen Holassie was on the verge of sending her son to stay with relatives where he might be able to get a decent education before she heard of the scholarship. A 62-year-old adoptive father of four, who has taken his children in from down-on-their-luck and drug-addicted relatives, said the scholarship program is the only way he can possibly send his kids somewhere where he feels they'll be well-served and safe. Duncan just extinguished the hope of 200 families just like this in order to make extinguishing the program permanently a little easier.
To echo the Washington Post, it's a choice Obama has the luxury of making for his kids. It's a choice almost 50 percent of the U.S. Senate exercises for their kids. It is a choice teachers' unions are petrified of giving to Carmen and Patricia. And, it's clear that, when given a choice, Democrats are more petrified of unions than they are interested in doing something that works for some of the most underserved kids in the District. Hope and change!
