Studying And Funding Education Alternatives

Op-Ed

Chicago Tribune
March 13, 2009

By U.S. Senator Dick Durbin

You correctly state in "A cruel school move" (Editorial, March 9) that Washington's Opportunity Scholarship program was created as an experimental, five-year pilot program in 2003. Unfortunately the rest of your editorial was off the mark.

The Opportunity Scholarship program gives more than 1,700 Washington students federally paid vouchers to attend private schools. Those students are enrolled in a wide range of private institutions—some world-class and others with serious problems.

The Department of Education and Government Accountability Office have both studied the program and found "schools" (sometimes consisting of a single room in a church basement) with significant health and safety issues, teachers who lack college degrees or teaching credentials, and no meaningful evidence that voucher students are performing better than their public school counterparts.

While you may not think those are "potential downsides," I and many others do.

I chair the subcommittee that oversees funding for the District of Columbia and have examined this program since its creation. When the five-year pilot program expires at the end of this school year, Congress must pass a bill reauthorizing it. That is not Congress doing the bidding of the teachers union; it is Congress following the law.

I've funded the program for an additional year, because 1,700 schoolchildren shouldn't be forced out of schools because Congress fails to act. Allowing the program to continue through end of next school year (2009-2010) will give Congress a chance to examine all the evidence to determine whether or not this program works.

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the authorizing committee, has promised a timely hearing on reauthorization of this program.

Many benefiting from this program want no questions asked about its efficacy. I think the taxpayers deserve better.

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