Tuesday, June 24, 2003; Page A20

TODAY'S PUBLIC HEARING in the House Government Reform Committee will give congressional and Bush administration proponents of a private-school tuition grant program in the District an excellent opportunity to make their case. If the necessary elements of a robust school-choice experiment are in place, proponents shouldn't have a difficult time. If, on the other hand, the program under discussion turns out to be limited to vouchers to subsidize private tuition without added support for traditional schools and public charter schools, they may discover that they have a nonstarter on their hands. It shouldn't come to that.

As a starting point, there is strong demand among District parents for expanded educational choices. At public charter schools, enrollments are rising and waiting lists are long. Private schools see similar demand, with private funding groups receiving far more requests from parents for tuition assistance than they can meet. Simply stated, growing numbers of District parents want their children to attend the kind of academically challenging schools that they don't find in the traditional public school system. But obviously many parents remain committed to the public schools, where the overwhelming majority of students are enrolled. All of those factors argue in favor of a federal school reform initiative that would provide ample support for a private tuition grant pilot program, an expanded flow of resources for traditional public schools and public charter schools, and a study component to evaluate student performance and the effect of competition in each of the three systems.

It ought to go without saying that the federal initiative should not supplant any District funds currently being spent on public education. Nor should it end up requiring the city to draw money from other D.C. priorities to fund expanded public school programs. Mayor Anthony A. Williams's position that the school-choice initiative requires "additional dollars, not carving from the same dollars" is absolutely correct. We would hope that the Bush administration and its supporters in Congress give great weight to the mayor's views on this issue. He has taken a politically courageous position in backing school choice, given where his party stands on the issue. He is already being accused by critics, such as D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, of supporting the administration's voucher initiative while the city's publicly accountable schools are "underfunded." That accusation is both unfair and untrue. The mayor has rightly called for tuition assistance and additional direct aid to traditional public schools and public charter schools. For the administration and congressional leaders to back a vouchers-only scheme for the District without any additional federal assistance for low-performing D.C. public schools sagging with crushing special education needs is to hand Ms. Norton and company a big political stick with which to beat the mayor and Board of Education President Peggy Cooper Cafritz for bucking them and the education lobby. The mayor and his supporters are putting parental desires and the educational needs of children first. They need the unstinting help of the Bush administration and Congress.