Voucher Idea Re-emerges With Transparent Aim.

Just when you thought it was safe to come out into the daylight of Washington's federal policy maze, up pops a familiar refrain, now in a totally different context. The refrain is vouchers; the context is "flexibility;" "local control," and a sputtering yet still viable "Contract with America."

Interestingly, this voucher proposal (given the seemingly benign name, "The Low-Income School Choice Demonstration Act") emanates from the more moderate Senate. The co-authors, Sens. Dan Coats, R-Ind., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., are both conservatives. Neither sits on powerful budget or finance or appropriations committees, but Coats is the third-ranking member of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources and chairs that panel's Subcommittee on Children and Families.

In the last Congress, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch tried to attach a demonstration voucher to the Labor Committee's rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He failed, but only by a slim margin. With GOP control now firmly in place in both chambers, a veteran Capitol Hill Democrat believes "the votes are there" for some kind of voucher proposal to succeed.

The Coats/Lieberman bill would allow up to 20 voucher demonstration projects to receive funding for three years and would ask that $30 million be set aside the first year to fund the program, which would be open to poor children only.

To be eligible, a child must come from a family whose low income entitles the child to a free or reduced-price school lunch. Priority would go to demonstration projects "in which choice schools offer an enrollment opportunity to the broadest range of eligible children; that involve diverse types of choice schools; and that will contribute to the geographic diversity among demonstration projects," including primarily rural areas and urban areas. The sponsors also state that "within each of the projects, priority will be given to children from the lowest-income families."

Costly Option

The authors state that the purpose of the bill "is to determine the effects on students and schools of providing financial assistance to low-income parents to enable such parents to select the public or private schools their children will attend."

Grants may be used "to pay the costs of providing education certificates to low-income parents to pay the tuition, the fees, the allowable costs for transportation..."

The bill, S.618, specifically states that the voucher demonstrations may "not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin," but later it states, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to affect the requirements of part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act." One assumes this means that disabled youngsters who opt for a voucher must be given the services to which they are entitled under IDEA--an expensive proposition.

Coats, in his press release says, "Low-income families have been denied educational choices for too long. Let's try this limited demonstration project and see if it improves the education of some of the neediest American children."

Added Lieberman, "The educational status quo is failing too many children. Although there are many excellent public schools in my state and throughout the country, it is clear that public schools are not working for all students, particularly those in our poorest communities."

An established fact that both senators choose to overlook is the enormous inequity in school finance from district to district, town to town, throughout states. High property values mean first-rate facilities and first-rate teachers that yield first-rate students. Low property values often translate into crumbling chools, despondent teachers, and youngsters devoid of hope.

Inequity Ignored

Together with the Coalition to Preserve Public Education, AASA will work with other associations to prevent passage of this "foot in the door" for private schools seeking public tax dollars. At the same time, we will do all we can to help states solve the dilemma and inequity of public school finance.

Researchers recently revealed that achievement test scores in public schools in upper-income areas equal those of students in private schools in those same areas. The reverse is also true, so it's not a question of public versus private. Rather, it's a question of well-financed versus poorly financed schools.

The current budget climate sees Congress rescinding or eliminating funds passed by Congres and signed into law by the president last September. Given this, educators must keep in mind that the Coats Lieberman proposal does not expand the education pie to provide more funds for all. It simply shifts funds the it had been going to public schools and rechannels them to private a religious schools.

Should a voucher demonstration pass it would be interesting to document exactly how many public school children "in our poorest communities" apply to and are accepted into private and religious schools. Also worth checking up on would be how many private and religious schools would eagerly accept the necessary federal audits and fully agree to open their doors to all children, regardless of disability, temperament, race, or national origin.

Congress owes it to our children to come up with something more substantial and less transparent than the Coats/Lieberman proposal.