Sorry Kids: No Opportunity For You

The D.C. voucher program is all but dead, according to this Washington Postspan> editorial< from Saturday.

This is before the Senate had a chance to debate the program, which gives $7,500 scholarships to low-income children to attend one of the many excellent private schools in the district.

A recent study, linked to in the Post editorial, shows the program helped improve reading scores for students, but not math scores. Parents surveyed in the study were satisfied with the perception of their child’s education at the private school. But the study shows that students who received the voucher did not say they felt safer or more satisfied than students who didn’t receive it. One other note is that students applying to the program from “schools in need of improvement,” “did not experience achievement impacts,” according to the study put out by the Institute of Education Sciences.

The initial results of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, as the D.C. voucher program is called, are not full of off the chart reading and math gains. This isn’t surprising when you consider that the kids in the program come from low-income backgrounds in one of the nation’s worst school districts. It’s going to take a while for any program in the world of inner city education to take hold and make a true educational impact.

By letting the program expire without debate, however, shows that the administration and Senate Democrats don’t want to have this fight out in the open – not now when education reform is in a spotlight due to $100 billion in stimulus funding. This is a program that gives low-income kids a chance to attend schools with discipline, structure and expectations. No wonder teachers’ unions and Democrats are concerned.