Some of Sasha and Malia Obama’s classmates at Sidwell Friends may lose their scholarships — unless President Obama stands up to congressional Democrats who are trying to kill school vouchers in D.C. It’s a double standard, writes William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal: Private school is OK for liberal Democrats’ children but not for low-income minority kids.
Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James (Parker) attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation’s capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program — and with it perhaps the Parker children’s hopes for a Sidwell diploma.
Known as the “Durbin language” after the Illinois Democrat who came up with it last year, the provision mandates that the scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia approves. The beauty of this language is that it allows opponents to kill the program simply by doing nothing. Just the sort of sneaky maneuver that’s so handy when you don’t want inner-city moms and dads to catch on that you are cutting one of their lifelines.
If the Parker children can’t afford Sidwell, their district-run choice is Roosevelt High, where most students fail to reach proficiency in reading or math.
The Dems are paying off the the teachers unions by destroying the voucher option, editorializes the Washington Post.
Why wouldn’t Congress want to get the results of a carefully calibrated scientific study before pulling the plug on a program that has proved to be enormously popular? Could the real fear be that school vouchers might actually be shown to be effective in leveling the academic playing field?
If D.C. public schools aren’t good enough for the Obama children — or for the children of Congress members — poor kids shouldn’t be trapped in the system, argues the Chicago Tribune.
About Joanne Jacobs
If it costs DC $28,813 per student, why not make the vouchers manditory set the value at $25,000 and completely close down the DC public school system. The District would save $3,813 per student. And the students would be out of those awful schools.
Bart, I didn’t make myself clear. I’m glad to get a chance to clarify.
When I said the voucher schools were skimming off the top students, I didn’t mean the top students had any obligation to stay in inferior classrooms just to benefit other students. That would, indeed, be a deplorable use of those students; I can see why you’d find it objectionable.
Instead, I meant that the top students were leaving and taking with them more money than they would have cost had they remained in public school. Neither you nor I is privy to exact details of DC’s school budgets, but I imagine student costs might be something like:
student with autism, $60K
dyslexic student, $20K
student with ADHD, $17K
student with no father at home and drug addicted mother, $17K
average student with uninvolved parent, $10K
good student, no disabilities, with involved parents, $4K
Obviously, I made these numbers up out of whole cloth, but I do believe that good students with involved parents are going to be the cheapest to educate. If such students cost the school $4-5K, but take $7.5K away when they leave with vouchers, then the rest of the students are even worse off, and that was my point.
CF, Thanks for the clarification. I can’t argue with much in your last post, assuming, as you say, the actual numbers are ballpark amounts.
A couple of thoughts that aren’t contradictory:
1) The voucher students must pass a means test to qualify, and are known to be economically disadvantaged. Also, those in failing schools are given preference. Might these disadvantages not warrant vouchers greater than the $4000 base level?
2) In the latest report, the mean tuition for voucher schools was around $5900, with the lowest being $3500. Since the voucher is capped at $7500, the mean voucher amount must have been less than $5900.
3) This idea of setting voucher levels could actually shine light on what public schools are actually spending to educate students, and allow discussion over what they should be spending.
It would be easy for a school to spend virtually nothing on a gifted or motivated student who is already ahead of the standard course material. And if those who favor using these students as assistant teachers had their way, the cost could actually be negative. A minimal voucher would effectively set a floor on what public schools would have to spend educating good students in order to keep them.
Bart, most likely you and I could find a voucher program we’d both support. We seem to be converging on a consensus.
But in a way, this is a distraction from the main problem. Our responsibility, or at least the responsibility of the government we elected, is to educate all the students in the District of Columbia. Some students will take vouchers and go to private schools, but most won’t, and we need to educate those kids too. Kids from the worst family backgrounds, who are harder to teach, are most likely to remain in public schools.
Although it’s fun to debate vouchers, the debate needs to move from the side issue to the main issue. Why is DC’s public education so staggeringly expensive? Is the $25K figure I’ve read actually correct? If so, is that figure calculated the same way states’ figures are calculated (I’ve read that there plenty of chicanery and obfuscation in those calculations)? Why is DC’s public education so bad (if indeed it’s worse than cities’)? What can we do to fix this?