Opinion Editorial | |
| Thursday, March 19, 1998 | |
Standing in the Way of Educational ChoicePete du PontFormer Governor of Delaware, is Policy Chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis |
Let's talk bluntly, shall we? Education in our nation's capitol is a
disgrace. Washington, D.C., has about 80,000 elementary and secondary students,
but only a little more than half of them will graduate. Tests show that
District students are increasingly falling behind other children around
the country. Is the problem just a lack of money? Hardly. The District spends about
$6,300 annually -- some estimates place it at about $7,500 -- on each student,
well above the national average of $5,600 per student. Yet building repairs
go uncompleted and sometimes students even begin the school year without
textbooks. Worse yet, these children are often forced to attend public schools that
have become war zones for gangs and retail outlets for drug pushers. Obviously, parents of these children would like a way out of this situation.
Unfortunately, low-income parents usually don't have that option. By the
time they've paid the tax man, the landlord and the grocer, there's not
enough left to put their children into private schools -- even if it means
watching them sink in an educational abyss that guarantees they will be
unable to read, write or think in a world that puts a financial premium
on those who can. The good news is that House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), along
with Rep. William Lipinski (D-IL) and Senators Dan Coats (R-IN), Joseph
Lieberman (D-CT) and Sam Brownback (R-KS), have introduced legislation to
rectify this situation. Their "District of Columbia Student Opportunity
Scholarship Act" would provide scholarships of up to $3,200 a year
for some 2,000 students whose family incomes are above the poverty level
but below 185 percent of poverty -- between about $16,000 and $29,600 for
a family of four. Eligible families would receive the lesser of 75 percent
of the tuition for the school they chose, or $2,400. With these vouchers,
families could put their children in the private or charter schools of their
choice. Would any low-income families in the District find this an attractive
offer? We already have the answer. A couple of private sector donors,
who have been interested in trying to help low-income children have educational
choice, put up $6 million last year to provide 1,000 scholarships in Washington,
D.C. Their program received 7,573 applications over the period of just
a few months; one in every six eligible students applied. Those are families who want a better life for their children. Sadly,
there are people who don't want to let them have it. President Clinton
is one of them. While he could afford to send his daughter, Chelsea, to
one of the most expensive private schools in the country, he does not want
to allow low-income children to have a similar opportunity. And then there is Education Secretary Richard W. Riley. He also opposes
vouchers: "If a school is failing, the solution isn't to give scholarships
to 50 children and leave 500 behind, but to fix the problem, fix the whole
school." In other words, if you can't give everyone a better education,
make sure nobody gets one. Secretary Riley has had the opportunity to fix low-performing public
schools and they are still broken. If he really thinks it's unfair to provide
opportunity scholarships for a small portion of District children, then
why doesn't he propose giving all the children a voucher? I'm almost certain
that Majority Leader Armey and other backers of the bill would be willing
to expand their proposal -- and perhaps finance it from some of those expensive
and useless programs that Mr. Riley oversees in the Department of Education. The truth is that a voucher proposal is not much different than the G.I.
Bill that has been so effective in giving veterans the ability to go to
college. Qualified veterans chose the college, public or private, and the
G.I. Bill helped them pay their tuition. No one claims that the G.I. Bill undermined public universities in America.
And, incidentally, a lot of veterans chose public universities -- because
those schools met their needs for scholarship, proximity to job or family
or other factors. President Clinton and his administration have had more than five years
to do something about the deplorable state of education in our nation's
capitol, as well as other low-performing, inner-city schools around the
country. In that time we have lost another half-generation to ignorance
and poverty. Along comes a bipartisan collection of Congressmen who are willing and
able to do something, and the administration can do nothing but attack the
proposal. We may not save all our children with educational vouchers, but
we can certainly save some of them. That's what low-income parents want. That's what minorities want. That's
what the children want. Failing to give them that option is a national
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