Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Reauthorization Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her advocacy for every child in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, last year we passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, a good bill, but instead of figuring out how to fund this bipartisan bill through our budget and appropriations process, which apparently has broken down, we are here in a legislative deja vu redebating a nearly identical bad bill we passed just months ago that will take money away from our public schools.

I am well aware of these attempts to divert money away from public schools and the failures of taxpayer-funded private schools. In the last 10 years, Wisconsin taxpayers have wasted $139 million of taxpayer dollars on private schools that were later terminated from the voucher program due to their lack of appropriate standards and accountability.

Further, in Wisconsin, 79 percent of the students who received a taxpayer-subsidized voucher in 2013 were already attending private schools. The SOAR Act would allow kids already in private schools to receive this funding. That means taxpayer dollars are being used not to advocate education, but instead as a form of tax policy. What is worse is that the taxpayer-funded voucher schools both in my State and here in D.C. are not providing equitable resources to special needs students with disabilities.

At the end of the day, this is also about results. Multiple Department of Education studies have concluded that the taxpayer-funded D.C. voucher program has failed to improve educational outcomes for participating students, and two U.S. Government Accountability Office reports have also identified its repeated management and accountability failures. Public funds should be used for public education which serves all students. It is that simple. I encourage everyone to oppose this bill.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source