Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Reauthorization Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, as a mother, I believe parents should seize any and every educational opportunity available to their children, so I certainly have no criticism of my own constituents who have seized this opportunity. In fact, in order to avoid disruption of the education of the current voucher students, I believe they should be allowed to remain in the program until high school graduation, and President Obama has offered a compromise to allow them to do so.

Consideration of this bill surely is unprecedented. Until today, I had never seen the House vote on virtually the same bill a second time in the same Congress, and that is about to happen here. The House, acted in October.

Why is this House acting redundantly again? Shouldn't the focus be on the Republican-led Senate where neither this bill--which is virtually the same as the bill that was passed before--nor its Senate companion has moved?

Last December, the Senate committee of jurisdiction canceled a scheduled markup of the bill to protect Republicans from this bill and especially from the civil rights amendments that had been proposed to the bill. Just last month, Chairman Chaffetz himself--who is the chairman of the authorizing committee, and the subcommittee--requested that the bill be included in the upcoming--the upcoming--2017 appropriation bill because the chairman, knows that legislation on an appropriation is how this bill is going to be passed.

The problem is that there is little congressional support for vouchers except for vouchers in the District of Columbia, where nobody can vote for anybody except this Member. Congress has refused to create a national voucher program. Just last year during reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, both the House and the Senate voted on several national voucher amendments, and each failed. So you see, they don't want vouchers in their own districts.

Moreover, the Congress has never authorized the D.C. voucher program in the light of day. When Congress first created the program in 2004, and then reauthorized it in 2011, it did so by adding the voucher bill as riders to appropriations bills. And to protect Republican Senators running for reelection this year, that is what is going to happen again. The Senate has never passed a standalone D.C. vouchers bill, and yet it is being reauthorized now for the third time.

In this Congress alone, Republicans have introduced legislation to overturn D.C.'s gun safety laws, its laws on reproductive health, its laws on nondiscrimination, its laws on marijuana, on labor, on immigration, and on education. It is, therefore, ironic to hear Republicans favorably cite the support of some D.C. government officials for passage of this bill.

Now, let me explain that because I don't want my colleagues to get away with mischaracterizing the position of the D.C. government on the bill before us today. When the House voted this bill last year, a majority of the D.C. Council wrote to Congress opposed to this voucher program. Last month, however, fearing the loss of $40 million for public and charter schools, a bare majority wrote in support of this bill. You can't blame them.

I must say though, I am being hoisted on my own petard here. Ironically, the funding for public schools and public charter schools exists only because during the creation of the voucher program, I repeatedly said that funding for public and charter schools was the preference of D.C. residents. To his everlasting credit, the then- Archbishop of Washington then insisted that public and charter schools also receive funding in conjunction with the voucher funding.

The D.C. Mayor and a bare majority this year of the council sent a carefully crafted letter supporting this bill because they knew they were writing for the residents of the District of Columbia who do not support vouchers. Their letter did not support the voucher program itself, but referred only to the bill's public and charter school funding.

Those who signed the letter, by the way, were even more concerned that the Congress, instead, could pass the radical Cruz-Meadows bill, which would permit D.C. students to use local funds, commandeer local funds, from the D.C. treasury to pay for private schools.

City officials recognized--and who can blame them--that Republicans have conditioned reauthorization of the public and charter school funding on reauthorization of the voucher funding. I understand their concern about losing public and charter school funding because it has been part of the city's education budget for a decade.

There is, of course, no reason for a unique Federal voucher program in the District of Columbia, in particular. According to the study of the program's effectiveness mandated by Congress, by statute, the D.C. voucher program has failed in its stated purpose. That purpose was to improve academic achievement. The voucher program has not improved academic achievement, as measured by math and reading test scores of students overall or of students the program prioritized from low- performing public schools.

Republicans, rightly, were disappointed with these results, so guess what they did. Instead of getting rid of a failed program, they simply changed the evaluation. The prior reauthorizations required the program's evaluation to be ``conducted using the strongest possible research designed,'' and a randomized controlled trial--the gold standard--was therefore used.

It is almost laughable when somebody changes the test in order to pass it. In contrast, this bill requires the evaluation to be conducted--this time--using an acceptable--that means any acceptable-- ``quasi-experimental research design'' and expressly prohibits the randomized controlled trial that was mandated before.

This dishonesty is transparent, Mr. Speaker. As researchers conducting an evaluation of the program point out, a randomized controlled study ``is especially important in the context of school choice because families wanting to apply for a choice program may have educational goals and aspirations that differ from the average family.''

The voucher program is also unnecessary. The District of Columbia has an unusually robust public school choice system, and it is available to every student. Now, I would wager that the District's choice system is the best in the Nation, and here is what it is.

Almost 50 percent of our children go to charter schools. Those charter schools were authorized when I worked with Speaker Newt Gingrich to allow charter schools instead of vouchers to be the District's alternative school system. For the public schools, 75 percent of our children attend out-of-boundary public schools that they have chosen. So I ask any Member who has public choice that robust to make himself known during this debate.

The D.C. voucher program also exempts students from protection of Federal civil rights laws that apply to public and federally funded programs. Under the voucher program, the Federal funding is considered assistance to the voucher student and not to the school, apparently in order to avoid these important mandates for our schools. Therefore, the program is not considered a federally funded program, although the money comes from Federal funds.

This program is exempt from title IV and title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, from title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, from the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Everybody knows that this program is going to be reauthorized as a rider on an appropriations bill, which is how the D.C. vouchers bill has always been enacted, in 2004 and again in 2011.

This is a masquerade here this morning. I am sorry Members had to be held over. This could have been taken care of yesterday. Even if the bill is not reauthorized, however, everyone expects that Republicans will continue to fund the three sectors, as they have always done.

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman is so concerned about the millions of parents who can't afford to send their children to private schools, his caucus had the perfect opportunity this year, because they have such a strong majority, to, in fact, pass voucher amendments, and they refused to do so for their own schools.

I want the gentleman from Minnesota to know that there are waiting lines in the District of Columbia to get into many D.C. public schools and, of course, into many charter schools. We also know nothing about the schools that tell us 90 percent of their children graduate because this House has no information on them. What we do know is that the randomized study took children in D.C. public schools and compared them to students at exactly the same levels in the voucher schools--no difference in overall achievement. That is how we measure achievement in the United States of America.

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on both sides?

Public schools in the United States and big cities are improving, and it should be noted that the D.C. Public Schools district continues to be the fastest improving urban school district in the United States, according to data released from the 2015 Trial Urban District Assessment. These schools deserve support. They are improving test scores unlike the voucher schools. In comparing the randomized study of those who wanted the voucher and didn't get it and who remained in the District public school system with those who wanted the voucher and got it, there was no difference in their math and English scores.

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Ms. NORTON. I yield to the gentleman.

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Ms. NORTON. In reclaiming my time, the gentleman has brought up a very important point.

By the way, some of the students who accept this voucher are already in the private schools, so they already could obviously afford the program. They are already attending the voucher schools, and they have now gotten vouchers. If you have some free Federal money, let me have some.

I yield to the gentleman.

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Ms. NORTON. In reclaiming my time, I think they would be because they have families behind them, and they are being compared with students who often do not.

I yield to the gentleman.

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Ms. NORTON. In reclaiming my time, there was no difference, and yet improving academic performance was a stated reason for the voucher program.

I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano).

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker,

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side?

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Ms. NORTON. Jackson Lee).
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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker,
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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker,

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Ms. NORTON.

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Ms. NORTON. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is going to be funded, and you can't blame the District of Columbia for wanting the public school and charter school funding that is in the bill. This bill is going to be funded. It was a Boehner bill, now it is essentially a Ryan bill, and I do want that understood.

I include in the Record the Council's letter from last year which opposed funding. Council of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, October 8, 2015. Hon. Jason Chaffetz, Chairperson, Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Chairperson Chaffetz: We write as locally elected officials to express our opposition to renewed efforts to expand a federally funded school voucher program in the District of Columbia. We appreciate your interest in providing support to public education in the District. We strongly believe, however, that federal funds should be invested in the existing public education system--both public schools and public charter schools--rather than being diverted to private schools.

We support the decision by Congress and the President several years ago to phase out the voucher program. Multiple U.S. Department of Education reports indicate that the program has not lived up to the promises made by proponents. These studies along with two troubling Government Accountability Office reports have also revealed that many of the students participating in the voucher program attend private schools with fewer resources and lower standards than our public schools. The evidence is clear that the use of vouchers has had no statistically significant impact on overall student achievement in math or reading, or for students from schools in need of improvement.

We have serious concerns about using government funds to send our students to private schools that do not have to adhere to the same standards and accountability as do public and public charter schools. For example, private religious schools, which 80% of students with vouchers attend, operate outside the non-discrimination provisions of the D.C. Human Rights Act. Moreover, the voucher proposal is inequitable: if fully funded, the authorization would provide many more dollars per student for vouchers than is allocated per student in public schools and public charter schools.

Although we believe that students who are already receiving a voucher should have the opportunity to maintain and use that voucher through graduation from high school, we do not support expansion of the program to new students. The District devotes considerable funds to public education, and our local policies promote choice for parents. Indeed, over the past decade the quality of public education in D.C. has increased, as a result of reforms and targeted investment. Families can choose from an array of educational institutions based on publicly--available performance metrics, both within the D.C. Public Schools system and among the myriad public charter schools. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called the progress of D.C. Public Schools ``remarkable'', while the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has ranked the District's charter sector as the best in the country.

Despite such ample evidence that the Congressionally imposed voucher program is ineffective, while D.C. public schools improve every year, some members of Congress continue to see our city as their personal petri dish. It is insulting to our constituents, who vote for us but not for any voting member of Congress, that some of your colleagues push their personal agendas on D.C. in a way they could never do in their home states. Attacking D.C. home rule, including any expansion of the voucher program, is irresponsible governing on the part of Congress.

We call on you to respect the wishes of the District's elected officials on the quintessentially local matter of education as you consider this issue. Sincerely, David Grosso,

D.C. Council, At-Large, Chairperson, Committee on Education. Charles Allen,

D.C. Council, Ward 6, Member, Committee on Education. LaRuby May,

D.C. Council, Ward 8. Elissa Silverman,

D.C. Council, At-Large. Anita Bonds,

D.C. Council, At-Large, Member, Committee on Education. Yvette Alexander,

D.C. Council, Ward 7, Member, Committee on Education. Brianne Nadeau,

D.C. Council, Ward 1. Jack Evans,

D.C. Council, Ward 2.

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Ms. NORTON. This year, of course, recognizing that they might lose $40 million, there was another bill, and a bare majority said: Give us the money.

But I want you to understand what the letter from the District of Columbia said.

``A reauthorization of the SOAR Act would help safeguard $150 million in Federal funds for the D.C. Public Schools and public charter schools over 5 years.''

And they go on to say: ``SOAR Act funding for D.C. Public Schools has been used to support initiatives that reward and increase retention of high performing teachers and principals. The funds also help attract more high quality teachers and principals to D.C. Public Schools and improve the efficiency with which schools are run.

``After years of decline, D.C. public school enrollment is rising for the first time in decades. Schools that previously struggled to fill their pre-kindergarten seats have waiting lists and other schools are attracting families back into the system at grade levels that have historically lost students.''

Clearly, we have a school system--and I cannot help but identify with them--that does not want to lose $40 million for D.C. public schools and D.C. charter schools. I don't ask anybody to change their vote. This program is going to be funded.

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

A recorded vote was ordered.

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