Do Vouchers In D.C. Pass The Test?

Washington

The writer is former mayor of the District and chief executive of Primum Public Realty Trust, a real estate investment firm.

School voucher programs have been controversial in this city and in our nation for a long time. Historically, the dispute broke down along Republican-Democratic lines. But in the 1990s, voucher proponents made a smart tactical decision and sought support from African American voters and their political allies. Voucher advocates had a simple and compelling claim: They told black parents that private schools would produce better academic outcomes for their children.

Voucher supporters made the same argument before the Supreme Court in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, which decided that the programs were legal. The lawyers offered a litany of statistics documenting the dire educational prospects for children in inner-city schools. Vouchers were a way out of failed school systems, the lawyers said, because private schools teach more effectively.

The Supreme Court accepted these arguments, as have many black parents and leaders. Former mayor Anthony Williams, for example, strongly supported the D.C. voucher plan. But what if it turns out that students who get vouchers do not learn more? Or what if we never know because the children do not take the same tests?

Recently the U.S. Education Department released the first round of results for the D.C. plan, and it turns out that the test scores of students receiving vouchers did not go up. Voucher supporters argue that these scores are from students' first year in the program, so we cannot label the program a failure. Research shows that children often struggle when they change schools, so we need more time to tell whether D.C. vouchers will make a difference.

But some voucher supporters -- including Education Secretary Margaret Spellings -- were even more defensive, suggesting that the program works if parents say it works. This argument is inconsistent with the No Child Left Behind Act, which says that schools will be judged by the results of reading, math and science tests. Many people, including me, think that this is too narrow a definition of success, but it is the one the federal government has adopted.

In another hit on vouchers, the think tank Education Sector reported last month that the McKay voucher program for special-education students in Florida cannot be evaluated because the students don't even take the same test as their counterparts in public schools. As a result, the report said, "We cannot know whether McKay students perform better, worse or the same as special-education students in public schools."

For voucher proponents who told African American parents that students would learn to read and write better in private school, now is the time to speak up. Now is the time to make clear that parental satisfaction, in the absence of improved test scores, is not enough to justify a voucher plan. And now is most certainly the time to demand that every voucher program be assessed in such a way that the parents and the community can learn how much students are learning.

-- James Forman

Washington

The writer is a co-founder of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School.

No one who has followed voucher studies will be surprised by Education Department findings of no bottom-line achievement differences between students in D.C. voucher programs and the D.C. public school students with whom they are being compared. However, count on the usual war, with each side citing experts who agree with its positions. Notwithstanding such differences, no study has found anything worth getting our hopes up for. Our focus now must be on the future of our voucher children.

Raising hopes for the vouchers experiment would be particularly unfair to these families. Neither the Republican Congress that torturously passed the voucher bill nor the new Democratic Congress support public funding for private schools. The bill initially failed in the House, even though many Congressional Black Caucus members who oppose vouchers were away for a presidential debate. The vote was held open for 40 minutes to turn around enough members to pass it by one vote.

We don't need to guess what most members of Congress would say if asked, as I was recently, whether they would still oppose the D.C. voucher program if the children performed better than their public school counterparts. No need to take the Fifth on that one. Most members of Congress join the American principled consensus that public funds, always in short supply, should go to public schools, and that funding for religious schools crosses the line of separation between church and state, wisely drawn by our nation's founders to avoid the religious strife found in many countries. For me there are two additional principles: No. 1, no system for educating our children should be imposed on any local jurisdiction against the will of the majority of elected officials and residents, and No. 2, every child is entitled to a good public education for which families have paid taxes.

Our responsibility now is to the children caught in yet another congressional experiment on the District. I have rejected suggestions that I try to get the program stopped now before its fiscal 2008 end date. Instead, I have had good talks with officials of the Catholic Church, whose schools most of the voucher children attend, and with the Washington Scholarship Fund concerning options. I have offered to join church and scholarship fund officials in raising money for children who desire to remain in private schools (D.C. school vouchers were privately funded by the Washington Scholarship Fund before being displaced by federal funding). For others there are two options: attending an acceptable public school outside the child's neighborhood or charter schools.

The irony is that vouchers were forced on the District against the will of the great majority of the city's elected officials and residents, even though the city had the largest number of charter schools per capita then and now. The city's charter schools operate as a popular alternative to the public school system, where children do as well and are now beginning to exceed D.C. public schoolchildren in achievement.

The voucher wars are over. D.C. school reform, our charter schools and good alternatives for our voucher students deserve our attention now.

-- Eleanor Holmes Norton

Washington

The writer, a Democrat, is the District of Columbia's representative in Congress.